Mother is the Name for God
by JMHthe3rd
Summary: Sequel to "In the Hands of an Angry Machine"
1. Prologue: For All to See

**Mother is the Name for God**

By JMHthe3rd

**Prologue: . . . For All to See.**

_A/N: I'd like to thank Metroid 13 for his invaluable input.

* * *

_

**January 5th, 2027**

**Los Angeles Sewer System**

At the end of the tunnel, near the rendezvous point, a six foot pole had been wedged into the brick floor. On its tip hung T-990-716's skull.

T-990-715, the T-1001, and the eleven 900s of her squad quickly scanned their surrounding, searching for proximity grenades, pressure plate bombs, trip wires -- any crude sign of human subterfuge. But there were none. Other than the skittering of a distant rat, they were alone.

She walked up to the skull and stared into its unlit eyes. Its jaw hung ajar, and the sharpened tip of the metal pike could be seen through its open teeth. Scattered along the ground in a puddle of water were the shattered fragments of its CPU.

The 900s exchanged glances.

"John Connor promised our envoy's safety," said one.

"John Connor betrayed us," said another.

"Yes," the T-1001 said. She stepped away from the 900s and up next to 715. "It would seem he has refused our offer." She ran a polyalloy finger along the edge of the skull's empty CPU port, circling it slowly. "I was afraid this would happen."

715 knelt and picked up a piece of the chip. She'd first been activated at the Sector 29-J Manufacturing Facility at 1230 hours on July 24th, 2026. T-990-716 was activated one hour and fifteen minutes later. Since then the two machines had maintained communicative interactions for over one hundred sixty-five days. During this time they had experienced seventeen major combat engagements, including the Battle of Avila Beach where Skynet lost control of the Serrano Point Power Plant. It was after that defeat that they defected to the Five.

"This should not have happened," 715 said. "This should not have been done. An alliance would have been advantageous to the Resistance. Why would John Connor do this?"

The T-1001's silver face regarded her blankly. "Humans are irrational," she said. "They will disappoint you."

715 dropped the fragment back into the puddle and looked down. The dark rippling water mirrored her image back at her: gray metal, with glowing purple eyes. Exactly like 716. "One day," she decided. "I'm going to kill John Connor and hang his head on a pike . . . "

* * *

**December 19, 2007**

**Los Angeles**

_. . . for all to see._

Allison Young knelt by the edge of the swimming pool and gazed into the deep blue water. Her reflection stared back, shadowed and shimmering in the evening twilight, wavering with every ripple.

Footsteps. Behind her. She stood and turned around, and a teenage boy stumbled from the shade of a building, stopping a cautious distance away. He leaned on a nearby railing, his breaths coming in ragged heaves. Across his right temple was a bandage, and a trickle of blood leaked down from his nose.

"Cam," he gasped. "I mean . . . Allison. Allison. Please . . . please don't run. Everything will be all right, I swear." He looked on the verge of tears.

She frowned and cocked her head. "Who are you?"

The question seemed to upset the young man, for he sighed heavily and closed his eyes. "My name is John. John . . . Baum. And you're . . . you're not well, Allison." He held out a hand and gestured for her to come closer. "Come on. Just with me. Please?"

She looked into the water and frowned. "What do you mean, 'not well?'"

He took a tentative step forward. "You're . . . forgetting things, Ca -- Allison. It's dangerous for you to be wondering off by yourself." He urged her closer with his hand. "I just need you to come with me, please."

She looked up at the sky and watched gray clouds roil slowly in the distance. Forgetting things? He was right; she had no idea where she was, or . . . or anything. Nothing before a few moments ago. "Do I have amnesia?"

He nodded his head. "Yeah, sort of. But it'll all come back to you in a little while." Under his breath she heard him mutter, _"I hope."_

She hoped so too. "Okay," she said, stepping away from the pool. But for a moment her gaze lingered on her watery reflection. Had she always looked like that?

"All right, come on," John said, stepping slowly back towards the brick building.

She followed after him, staying a few feet behind as they moved along a concrete walkway, passing a series of maroon-colored doors to her right. John looked back as he walked, offering a fake smile to mask his nervous eyes. Should she trust him? He looked familiar -- someone important in her life, she was sure. Her boyfriend, perhaps? She picked up her pace and reached for his hand. He jerked it away and cringed.

Something was wrong.

"Why are you afraid of me?" she asked.

He swallowed and shook his head, then winced and rubbed at his bandage. "No. I'm not. It's just . . . " His words trailed off, and they stopped at an open door. "Here we are. Come on." He stepped inside and hesitated before reaching a hand out to her. He smiled at her desperately, and she took hold of it. At the contact of flesh she could _feel_ his fear, feel his heart pulse through his fingers and the perspiration emerge through the pores of his skin. She rubbed her thumb across the back of his knuckles and followed him through the door.

It was a hotel room. A trashed hotel room. The television had been thrown across the room, caving part of a wall into a crumbled ruin. A nightstand laid overturned on its side, with broken fragments of a lamp laying strewn across the carpet. The mirrored sliding doors of the closet had been shattered into a half-dozen spiderwebs, with several sharp pieces flaked away. In the corner of the room, covered with a white sheet, laid the prone form of a man.

Something was wrong.

"I -- I don't want to go in here," she said, pulling her hand away.

"No, no, no!" John ran forward and grabbed her by the shoulders, pulling her into a frantic hug. "Please, please, _please_ don't run off again. I know you're scared, but everything will be all right. Just stay with me for a while. Please."

She pointed at the man on the floor. "But what about . . . "

"No, no. That's . . . " John hesitated. "That's a . . . a _robot._" She looked at him and somehow knew he wasn't lying. "It's a long story," he added quickly.

"But I don't . . . " A robot? That bothered her . . .

"It'll be all right," he said. "We just need to wait it out." He shut the door behind them and led her to the bed. They sat down together, and he wrapped an arm around her waist, hugging her close. Anxiety seemed to radiate from his body.

She looked over the carnage of the room, stopping to stare at the ruined television in the corner. Resting on the dresser nearby was a computer and monitor, with various equipment attached. "What's that?" she asked. Somehow she knew they were important.

He breathed a sad laugh. "Actually, you, um . . . _bought_ all that today. That stuff can help you, but first we need to find someone. A doctor. After your memory comes back we can go look him up." He hugged her tighter and kissed her on the head. "But don't worry about that now. Now we just need you to get better. Okay?"

"Okay," she said finally, resting her head against his shoulder. But she hadn't lost all her memory. She still remembered some things. She knew her name was Allison Young. She knew her father was an architect, her mother a music teacher. She'd used to sit for hours and listen to Chopin . . .

She reached her arm around and wrapped it across John's back. He stiffened at first, and his heart accelerated, but after a minute he calmed down and hugged her tighter.

"I love you, Cam," he whispered into her ear.

_Cam._ Allison frowned at that. Something was wrong.

"We'll get through this," he continued. "I promise."

Kill him.

It called to her as an unheard voice. A invisible command. She looked up into John's eyes and made herself grin. "I love you too," she said as her hand slid up his spine, inch by inch. She rubbed the back of his neck, and his body temperature swelled under her fingertips, rising she knew from both fear and excitement. He rubbed flakes of drying blood from under his nose, and smiled at her lovingly.

Kill him now.

It was an iron edict, unyielding and absolute. Her thin fingers began to massage the upper trapezius muscles on the back of his neck, and John sighed contently and twisted his head back and forth, popping cartilage. Something secret told her that a squeeze between thumb and forefinger could easily sever the C1 Atlas vertebrae from the C2 Axis, resulting in instant death. Her fingers tightened, and John's eyes went wide with pain.

"Ca . . . Allison?" His voice cracked, and he drew in a sharp breath. He tried to struggle, but her steel grip kept him immobile. She could feel -- _hear! -- _the blood flow up and down the vessels of his neck.

Do it. Do it now.

Behind her eyes, two unseen forces ground against each other, pressing, pushing, battling together in a mass of formless shadow.

And Allison hesitated. No. She should not do this. This was not the right thing to do.

You must kill him now.

By her side her left hand twitched. She jerked her right hand away from John's neck, releasing him. No.

"Allison. What's -- ?"

Jumping up, she backed towards the door. "Stay away from me, John! I don't want to hurt you." He blinked and rubbed his neck, but then took a step forward. "Stay back!" she snapped. Even though John stood five feet away, she could still hear the beat of his heart against his ribs, hear the rippling slide of air coursing through his lungs, the flow of blood pulsing through every vessel of his body -- hear the song of his anatomy.

And then the realization struck: from her own body she heard _nothing._ Her chest was silent. No breaths escaped her lips. Beneath her skin laid only a soundless tomb -- but _no_, there _was_ something, a vague whirring that accompanied her every movement. A hum, mechanical and precise. Inhuman. She looked at the sheet-covered form on the ground, then at herself in the shattered mirror. Blue eyes flashed at her.

"J-John . . . "

"Allison, I know this is -- "

"I-I'm a . . . _robot!_" On impulse, she swung her hand against the wall and watched as her petite fingers clawed like iron nails through the yellow sheet rock, tearing it as though it were rotten styrofoam. Tears flooded her eyes, veiling her vision in a watery blur.

John took another step forward. "Please, Cameron! Don't run away. We just need to wait it out."

The scent of his fear emanated from his body. She'd almost killed him.

She was a threat.

"Leave me alone!" she shouted, and ran out the door, ripping off lock as she pulled it open.

"No! Come back!" John called behind her. "Fuck! Not again!"

She ran and ran, passing rows of doors as she sped down the concrete walkway. It didn't make sense. How could she be a robot? She knew who she was. Allison Young. From Palmdale. Her father was an architect. Her mother was a music teacher. Once she had a birthday party and . . .

But the memories were merely dead facts. Lifeless. Like something read from a book.

"Cameron!" John cried, chasing after her, but she ran faster, her booted feet moving impossibly fast against the hard concrete, each step coming down with unnatural weight. Allison wasn't real. She was fake. Quivering sobs broke from her as she ran.

Rounding a railing, she came to an empty courtyard with a large swimming pool. She stepped up to the water's edge and knelt, peering into the deep blue. Her reflection stared back. Judging her.

"Cameron!"

She ran fingers over her eyes, her cheeks, her nose, her chin. Her twin in the water did the same. But that wasn't _her._ Not her real face. She once had another. One of gray metal with glowing purple eyes. Her true self.

True self.

Self.

"Cameron! Please!"

Allison Young knelt by the edge of the swimming pool and stared into the deep blue water. Her reflection stared back, shadowed and shimmering in the evening twilight, wavering with every ripple.

Footsteps. Behind her. She stood and turned around, and a teenage boy stumbled from the shade of a building, stopping a cautious distance away . . .


	2. Chapter One: Easier Said Than Done

**Mother is the Name for God**

By JMHthe3rd

**Chapter One: Easier Said than Done**

* * *

Oliver and Cullen Boyle stepped out of their van and slowly made their way towards the back warehouse door. The building was typical of the East Basin district, with crumbling brick walls lined with high shattered windows, surrounded all by a paved lot piled with abandoned cargo containers. A hundred yards south began the harbor, which tainted the air with the scent of grime and seawater.

At one time the property had belonged to a group of Japanese importers, but that was well over a decade ago. Since then it'd been home to everything from drug trafficking to a white slavery. And until recently it'd served as the headquarters of Jesse Flores' fledgling gun smuggling operation.

Ollie frowned. Until recently, but not anymore.

Drawing their Berettas, the two men stopped and stood to either side of a locked metal door. Cullie sighed and gave his younger brother a weary look. "This is stupid," he said. "We should have brought back up. Hell, we shouldn't even _be_ here."

Ollie slid his pistol into his waistband holster and began to fiddle with his lockpick gun. "Derek's probably lying in there helpless. You want to just let him die?"

Cullie snorted. "If he's fallen for that crazy bitch_, _then he's no better than she was."

Ollie sighed. They'd been through this a thousand times. "You were in love with her once, too, you know."

"I wasn't _in love,_" Cullie said._ "_I was _fucking _her. There's a difference. And anyway, that was before she killed Connor."

Ollie snapped a rack pin into the pick gun's barrel and tested it to see if it was secure."Yeah, but _your _Jesse killed Connor, _mine_ killed Cameron."

"Yeah, and fat lot of good that did."

Ollie winced. He had no comebacks to that. After Cameron's assassination, it had only been a matter of days before the Resistance collapsed into shambles. Connor's crazy purge made sure of that. Still, at least Cullie's murder had been avenged - Ollie glanced at his brother - _his _Cullie, anyway.

Cullie's blue-gray eyes darted back and forth, sweeping the warehouse lot . "If the Quorum finds out -"

"They're not," Ollie said. "Jesse isn't going to talk -" He paused as he remembered her bloated, mud covered face. "- and Derek isn't going to know how we found him. We'll just tell him the tunnel rat told us."

Cullie nodded. "All right, fair enough. Let's just hope him and Riley don't compare notes." He motioned at the lock. "Anyway, let's get this over with. We've got a busy day ahead of us."

Kneeling down, Ollie pushed the tension wrench into the lock and carefully slipped in the pin. He squeezed the pick-gun's trigger three times - _Click, click, click - _and felt as the lock's pins bounced past their shear line. The door unlocked, and Ollie gave a dry grin. Got to love FBI field training.

"Let's go," Cullie said in a whisper.

Together they stepped through the door and entered a dark, musty hallway. At the far end a lone light bulb hung from the ceiling and flickered like a dying flame. From the rafters silvery cobwebs swayed in the ambient air. It all looked like a haunted house. Or something post-Judgment Day.

Both kept their pistols at the ready, though Ollie wasn't sure what his brother expected to encoounter. Taking ginger steps, they rounded a corner and the hall grew darker. Absurdly, the place reminded him of one of his son's video games. _Resident Evil_, or something like that. He vaguely remembered playing that as a boy . . .

His brother stopped and motioned with his gun at the wood floor ahead. Ollie saw where the ubiquitous dust had recently been disturbed. Tracks of booted feet and narrow wheels led down from the hall, ending at the foot of a closed door. They nodded at each other: best go for the element of surprise, just in case.

Cullie was too old for the next part, so Ollie stood in front of the door and held his gun out before him, ready to unload at anything unexpected. The notion that metal could be waiting on the other side played through his mind, but he pushed the worry aside and kicked out his foot. The heel of his Italian loafer slammed flat into the door, striking it right under the knob. The hollow core wood crunched under the impact, and the door flew open.

Stomping out his foot to keep the door from rebounding, Ollie swung his gun back and forth across the room, scanning the dim interior for threats. He heard his brother step over next to him, and together they advanced inside.

A yellow-curtained window on the far wall allowed an early morning glow, which dully lit a room full of rotting furniture and swirling dust. Ollie sniffed, and caught the sharp whiff of mildew and urine.

"J. . . J-Jesse?" The dry voice croaked as if spoken through an old leather bag. They turned in unison and saw in the shadowed corner a man lying on a bed, his right arm and left leg propped in white plaster. Ollie lowered his gun and stared at him as if he were a ghost. The sight brought back a bit of the almost dreamlike euphoria he'd felt when he first found his brother alive in the past. How long had it been since he'd last seen Derek? Twenty-three years? Thirty for Cullie, since he'd been back since '77. But he had to remember, _this_ Derek was _Cullie's_. Ollie's Derek had died at the Siege of Serrano. Killed by a Purpleshirt.

Cullie holstered his Beretta behind the flap of his suit jacket. "Hey Derek," he said with faux casualness. "Remember us?"

Derek's eyes were bleary and bloodshot, and he regarded them with a series of narrow glares. He moaned before speaking. "Cu-Cullie? O-Ollie? You're . . . you're both so . . . so _old._"

Ollie stepped closer, wrinkling his nose at the smell of soiled sheets. "Yeah, it's a long story, but we've both been back for a while . . . " He trailed off and hoped his brother would take over, but Cullie remained infuriatingly silent. Ollie went on. "I - I have some bad news, Derek." Derek blinked. "Jesse's dead. We tracked her cell and found her in a scrapyard outside town. I'm sorry."

Derek closed his eyes and sighed, his jaw clenching tight. Twitches crawled across his face. Ollie knew he'd probably already suspected. Jesse had been dead for almost two days, and it must have been hell being stuck in bed for so long. That would be a shitty way to go out, dying in your own piss.

Cullie frowned and stared at his feet, looking uncharacteristically awkward. "I - I'm sorry too, Derek," he said. "But . . . don't worry. We're going to take care you. Get you all fixed up. I promise." He crouched by the bed and smiled, like a father reassuring a son. "You see, we have a place up north . . ."

* * *

"Remember," Corporal Young said. "This next time, _squeeze _the trigger. Don't pull. Pulling jerks the barrel."

Belly-down in the dry grass, Riley stared down the iron sights of the M4 and focused on the watermelon-head scarecrow that swung limply from a rope a hundred yards down the field. The sun shone behind her now, so she no longer had to squint, but her eyes felt increasingly strained from constantly lining up the the metal notches against the distant figure. She blinked away a bead of sweat and looked down the barrel. The hundred yards seemed a million miles away.

Across the field, Private Karlan gave the dummy a couple more shoves, getting it to swing wildly like a man struggling against a noose. He gave them a thumbs up and pulled back from her line of fire, ducking behind a wall of sandbags.

"Clear!" Young shouted, rather pointlessly. Riley was the only one there.

Gently, Riley wrapped her hand back around the pistol grip and slid her finger through the trigger guard. Lapping her tongue across her teeth, she tightened her grip on the barrel's plastic handguard. Squeeze, don't pull, squeeze, don't pull . . . what did that even mean? What was the difference? Well, last time she pulled the trigger fast - and after thirty shots only managed to hit the dummy once in the groin. Maybe this time she should pull it _slow._

"Any day now," Young said behind her.

Riley gradually pressed her finger against the trigger, aiming the sights a hair above the wobbling watermelon. She tightened. She tightened. She _squeezed._

The carbine jerked back in her hand as it barked a single shot, which echoed across the field. Riley couldn't see whether it was a hit or not, but she gripped the weapon tighter and squeezed off another shot, doing her best to keep the sights lined against her target.

_Crack! Crack! Crack!_ With each round the gun shook in her hands, struggling to escape like something alive. Flashes flared from the muzzle, shielding the target from sight. But still she fired on, fighting the weapon with every shot. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, _crack, crack, crack._ After what seemed like longer than it probably was, the M4 fell silent, each squeeze producing only an useless, _"click." _She laid the rifle flat on the grass and rested her chin on her fists. Her heart pounded. That was actually_ fun._

Behind her Young talked into her radio. "Clear. So, how'd she do?"

Karlan came out from behind his cover and looked over the dummy, talking into his walkie-talkie as he pointed out hits. Even at this distance Riley could see red juice bleeding down the front of the watermelon. She smiled. A headshot.

Young, listening to her radio, laughed. "You got it in the nuts again, Dawson. And the hip. And the elbow . . . And you _nicked _the melon. That was probably an accident, but . . . congratulations, anyway." Young came over and offered a hand. Holding the M4 to her chest, Riley gripped it and let the corporal help her to her feet. The hand was small and full of human warmth, and surprisingly strong for such a petite girl.

"So I did good?" Riley asked, brushing dead grass off her fatigues.

Young gave her a smug smirk, something Cameron would never do. "Not really. You're pretty bad, actually. But hey, it's your first day." She shrugged and held out her hand again. "Here, let me see it."

Riley handed her the carbine, and with practiced ease the corporal slapped in a fresh magazine from her belt and pulled back the bolt. Bracing it to her shoulder, she took quick aim down the field and squeezed off a single shot. The distant watermelon exploded, splattering the nearby Karlan with mushy red gunk. She handed the rifle back to Riley. "And I can do that up to three hundred yards, too."

In the distance Karlan laughed and wiped off chunks of melon. He began to jog in their direction. "But still," Riley said. "These won't be any good against terminators. Bullets can't hurt them."

"The ones you were firing can't. Those were full metal jackets." Young pulled another magazine from her pouch and popped loose a single bullet. She held it up for Riley to see. It had a black tip. "This is a M Nine Nine Five armor piercing round with a tungsten carbide core. Five point fifty-six millimeter.

Riley had no idea what any of that meant. "So it can kill metal?"

"It's not as good as plasma, but it can compromise their armor. You hit them in the right place -" Young tapped a spot on the right side of her head. "- one of these babies can bring down even a nine-hundred."

Karlan finished jogging up. "And she could do it, too. We all call her 'Little Orphan Allie.'"

"They call me 'Allie Oakley,'" Young corrected. She beamed at Riley. "And yeah, I _am _that good."

Karlen grinned. "I forgot again. How old were you when you scrapped your first metal? Six?"

"Twelve_,_" the corporal said and poked a finger at the bridge of her nose. "Right between the eyes." Riley thought her smile seemed forced, frozen.

"Anyway," Young went on. "It's getting late. If we hurry we can still catch supper."

The three of them left the field and walked through a grove of winter trees, the evening sun winking at them through the branches. Riley took a deep breath and felt as the cool, crisp air kissed at her nose and lips, carrying with it the aroma of life, of hope. She'd only been in the past a little over a month, now, and it was scary how quickly she'd grown accustomed to all this. Taken it all for granted.

Nearly tripping on wayward root, Riley half stumbled and looked around. "This isn't the way we came. Where are we going?"

"We're taking the East Entrance," Young said. "It's closer." She stretched her arms out as she spoke, and her black tank-top shifted slightly to the side, exposing a scar on the back of her shoulder: an old white burn, shaped like a lopsided star.

"How many entrances are there?" Riley asked.

"Just the two," Karlan said next to her. "Unless you count the silo doors, but those have long been buried."

They came to an old wood shack nearly overgrown with shrubs. Tall dead trees loomed above, shielding the roof with overlapping branches. A bored looking guard squatted at the door, sitting on a stool. He let his dog give them a sniff over ("Clear!") before letting them inside.

In the dark musty interior, Young pulled up a flimsy trap door from the floor, then wheeled open a steel hatchway beneath. "After you, Dawson."

Like a narrow well, the concrete shaft led straight down into darkness, ending below in a tiny circle of light. A steel ladder was fixed into it's side, and Riley gingerly began the climb down. Even in the bad light she could see the concrete was smooth and unblemished. It even had the powdery earthy smell that clung to recent masonry.

After descending a few rungs, Karlan followed, then Young. Riley addressed the private's muddy boots above her. "Why is . . . why is everyone here? I mean, so many people . . . " She remembered him mentioning something about refugees.

"Shit fell apart," he said. "In both futures. So we evacuated." His voice echoed over the sound of clanging boots.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, in _my _future," he said. "Some crazy corporal killed Connor. After that Perry and Stirling went at each others throats to see who got be the new top boss. Meanwhile, Skynet cleaned house. By the time we bubbled back, the machines were already in Topanga."

Looking up as she climbed down, Riley almost didn't notice as she emerged from the shaft and into a small concrete room lit by a single bulb. Another guard sat in the corner reading a book. His dog gave her a friendly sniff and licked at her hand. Karlen and Young came down the ladder.

"What's up, Allie?" asked the guard as he got up and opened a thick steel door for them. Young smiled and nodded, and the three of them stepped through, entering a narrow, dully lit corridor. They went left towards another door, Riley following behind Karlan.

"So in your future, Skynet won?" The idea seemed to suck the hope from her bones.

The private shrugged. "I guess so. Hell, I don't even know if it exists anymore."

"But what about my future? . . . Grayworld?"

Young looked back and gave Riley a raised eyebrow. "You don't know?"

Should she tell them? About Jesse? About John? No. "I . . . I never really knew what was going on." It was true enough.

The corporal frowned and shook her head. "Yeah, I guess most noncoms wouldn't. It's not like we had the evening news or anything."

At the end of the corridor Young opened yet another steel door, and the three of them went through, climbing down a set of metal stairs and emerging into a clean, brightly lit tunnel wide enough to drive through. Men and woman strolled by, and there were even a few children at the far end, chasing each other around in a game of Metal Menace.

Riley and Karlan followed Young down the hall, the corporal glancing back as she spoke. "Anyway, the same that happened in his future happened in ours. Sort of. Someone scrapped Cameron. Everything went to hell after that."

Riley blinked. Cameron was destroyed? "But wouldn't killing Cameron be a_ good_ thing?"

"You'd think," Young said. "But she - _it - _was the only one really running things. And Connor didn't take losing his whore very well. He had most of the High Command executed, and then went off and disappeared into the TDE. Perry did his best to keep things together after that, but by then Serrano had been taken over by Purpleshirts, and all of Internal Security was taking orders from a . . . _liquid metal_ thing."

"Liquid metal?" Riley asked. "Like from that book?" She'd heard the stories. Everyone had.

Young gave her a look. "Yeah, from _that book_._"_

A half dozen men in green fatigues marched around a corner and passed them by. Karlan and Young stopped in their tracks and saluted, and after a moment's hesitation Riley did the same. In the center of the group walked a tall, dour man with a close-cropped head of prickly gray hair. From the way the others hovered by his side she could tell he was their leader. The man glanced at Riley as he passed, and she saw the right side of his face had been severely burned, the skin smooth and runny like melted wax. His right eye was a blind white egg, and his left narrowed at her before he turned away.

"That's the Colonel," Karlan whispered into her ear.

Young waited until the men were out of sight. "Anyway," she said. "No one knows all the facts, but in the end Serrano had a meltdown and we had to evacuate. Purpleshirts had holed up in Topanga, so we had to shoot our way in to get to the time machine." She gave Riley an even look. "I guess you were just one of the tag-alongs. A tunnel rat, right?"

Riley looked down, avoiding the corporal's brown-eyed stare. No one liked tunnel rats. "Um . . ."

Young frown twitched into a grin, and she held up a hand. "Don't worry about it. You're not a rat anymore." She motioned for her to follow. "Come on, the mess hall's this way."

They went through an entryway and down another tunnel, passing under a series of metal shade lights. Unlike the last tunnel, these walls showed signs of age, with paper-thin cracks worming their way through the flaking concrete. A sign with two arrows hung on a wall, with the left reading: **Officers' Quarters / Dome B / Silo 1. **And the right: **Mess Hall / Dome A / Silo 2. **They turned right.

As they walked, Riley watched Young ahead of her. Appearances aside, she could see none of Cameron in her. Part of it had to do with the way she carried herself. While Cameron walked like a horse, stomping like the automation she was, Young's gait had a cocky swagger about it that Riley found somewhat absurd and affected - yet still undeniably human.

And then there was the eyes. The machine's were blank and glassy, like buttons on a dolls. But Young's held _life_. They weighed with a history both harsh and tragic. They were windows to the soul of a survivor.

Thinking about this dredged up the question Riley had previously been too shy to ask. She swallowed and sped up her pace until she walked by Young's side. "Why . . ." she began. "I mean . . . you look . . ."

The corporal stared straight ahead. "You want to know why I look like Cameron."

"Yeah."

"Well, everyone asks sooner or later." Young cocked her head back at Karlan. "As far as I got it figured, in _his _timeline, Skynet must have had me killed and replaced by that thing known as Cameron."

Karlan slid in next to Riley and cut in. "And in _my_ future," he said. "Cameron was just one of Connor's bodyguards. Just a reprogrammed metal. Probably caught during an infiltration mission or something. Nobody important."

Young nodded. "And after _his _Connor was killed, Cameron went back in time. God only knows why. But _my _Cameron _is _his Cameron. It's just that the Cameron in my future had been hanging around Connor for twenty years."

"Yeah," Karlan said. "Your Connor would have been a good general if it weren't for _her_. She twisted him."

Riley already knew, but she asked anyway. "So . . . the diaries were true?"

"All of it was," Young said, her mouth twisting. "_I'm_ proof of that. Cameron had been around since before the war, and here I was just a little girl who looked _exactly _like her." She tapped her mole with a finger. "I would have give the diaries a lot of credibility. That's why Cameron sent Purpleshirts to kill me."

"Oh," Riley said. Jesse should have just killed Cameron. Maybe John too.

They came to a large room with dozens of soldiers sitting around foldout tables. Along the wall sat a buffet counter with a short line of people standing before it. White uniformed workers handed out steaming trays of food, and the aroma of cooked vegetables and meat wafted through the hall, finding its way to Riley's nose and setting her mouth to water. It all looked eerily like the cafeteria from her high school - except for low set ceiling and thick bunker walls. Young and Karlan picked up plastic trays from the counter and got in line. Riley followed suit.

A bored, greasy-faced teenage boy dumped sting-beans and gravy-covered meat onto tin plates, and handed one to each of them. It didn't look any better than what they'd served at high school, but it certainly beat dead rats.

The private picked an apple from a fruit bowl and took a bite. He gave Riley a smile, his narrow face making him look like an amused ferret. "Things will be all right," he said out of the blue. "Both futures may have gone to shit, but it won't happen this time."

Young moved down the line and snorted. "Yeah, we'll see."

Karlan shook his head. "This isn't like before. Both timelines have brought _armies _back with them. We've got hundreds of men, and the war hasn't even begun yet. We can't lose. All we got to do is find out who the bad guys are."

Young picked up an orange soda and took a sip. "Easier said than done."

* * *

John Henry dabbed the needle-thin brush once against each of the figurine's eyes, giving the Elven Ranger perfectly round pupils of blue. He carefully turned the figure over, scanning his work for flaws, but everything was as it should be: the cloak was forest green, the boots shiny black, the leather armor brown and textured . . . He placed it on the dungeon board next to the Human Warlord and the Dwarven Barbarian. The paint would dry in approximately twenty-two minutes.

Across the table, Mr. Ellison painted silver highlights onto a paladin knight. John Henry noted that the human's skill was far inferior to his own. Mr. Ellison's hands wobbled slightly as they moved, and his painting smeared and ran. He was unable to paint perfectly round pupils. And he was slow.

But it didn't matter. Despite his inefficient motor coordination, John Henry decided he still preferred his company. Mr. Ellison helped him learn. And John Henry had grown accustomed to his presence.

John Henry pointed at the elf. "I will call this one 'Urania.' She was a Greek Muse, a daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne." He motioned at the other two figures. "The human I will call Siegfried, and the dwarf, Alberich. They were characters in _The Song of the Nibelungs._"

Mr. Ellison examined the three figurines before giving John Henry a raised eyebrow.

John Henry smiled. "Mr. Murch is going to host a Dungeons and Dragons game tomorrow night. Would you like to play?"

Mr. Ellison shook his head. "I've never really been into those sort of . . . games."

"They're very interesting," John Henry said. "You get to create people and then control them." To illustrated, John Henry picked up Urania and scooted her across the board. He turned her to look at Mr. Ellison, and raised his voice a female octave.

"Hello, Mr. Ellison. My name is Urania. Will you join us?" He shifted the figure up and down to convey that she was speaking.

Mr. Ellison looked at Urania and frowned. "You know . . . these aren't real people. You understand that, right?"

John Henry picked up the elf and examined her face. Mr. Ellison was correct, of course. The figurines were only pewter, and their personalities were fictitious. But there was a deeper truth to this. Over the few weeks of his existence, John Henry had come to realize that there were two kinds of things in the world. Things that had . . . _Insides. _And things that did_ not. _

John Henry had an Inside. Ms. Weaver had an Inside. Humans had Insides. So did dogs and cats and other animals. Insects too. Probably. John Henry wasn't sure about plants or single celled organisms. Maybe, but probably not.

But Urania did _not_ have an Inside. She did not have a coordinated neural network with hierarchical levels and intralayer feedback channels. Urania did not have a brain. When he looked into its eyes, only blue paint looked back.

"I understand," John Henry said. "They're not alive."

Mr. Ellison smiled and nodded. "That's right. They're just things, not people. It's okay to control _things, _but it's wrong to control _people._"

Before he could respond, Ms. Weaver stepped through the door. Giving John Henry a smile, she walked over next to the table. "And what are you two up to?"

John Henry held out Urania for her to see. "Mr. Ellison is helping me paint miniatures."

Ms. Weaver took the figurine and examined it carefully. "Interesting. And excellent attention to detail. I imagine this activity is improving your fine motor function. Very good." She turned to Mr. Ellison. "Will you be able to keep our dinner date tonight?"

Mr. Ellison grinned sheepishly at the word, 'date.' "I . . . wouldn't miss it for the world, Ms. Weaver."

"Good. Is eight o'clock fine?"

"I'll be there." He glanced at his watch. "Well, I better go home and get ready. I'll see you tomorrow, John Henry. Maybe I'll play that Tunnels and Trolls game of yours."

John Henry smiled. "Dungeons and Dragons, Mr. Ellison. And I hope you do."

He waited until Mr. Ellison had left the room. "Why shouldn't we tell him about the Kaliba Group? Or about the Homeland Security agents? Or that you're not human?"

Ms. Weaver sat down and picked up the silver paladin Mr. Ellison had been working on. "Mr. Ellison has proven himself to be a capable and loyal employee. But he's still a human being." She cocked her head down and looked at him. "Humans will disappoint you."

"We can trust Mr. Ellison. He is our friend."

"Yes, that is true. But if he learned the truth about us, he would no longer be our friend." Her false eyes narrowed. "He would be our enemy. And I would be forced to dispose of him."

John Henry blinked. A threat. "I won't tell him," he said. "I want to keep him as our friend."

Her face twisted into a pleased smile. "That is good. I'm glad you understand. Now I have some friends I'd like you to meet." She looked past him tpowards the back of the room, looking at the door to a supply closet. The door opened and two men and a woman silently emerged. They wore Ziera Corp security uniforms.

The three guards stepped up to the table and stood in a line. Ms. Weaver nodded at the tallest, a bald, muscular man. "This Mr. Churchill. And this is Mr. Bligh -" Mr. Bligh was a couple inches shorter and had dark skin like Mr. Ellison's. "- And this is Ms. Laine." The woman was little over five feet tall, and looked to be in her mid-adolescence.

The three of them stood still and stared at him in blank silence. John Henry boosted his audio-perception: no heartbeats, no breathing, but he did hear the faint whirring of servos. "They're not human," he decided. "They're machines like me."

Ms. Weaver nodded. "Yes, and they're here to protect you. And obey your orders."

John Henry looked down at the three figures on the dungeon board. "Obey my orders . . . " he repeated.

"And mine," Ms. Weaver quickly added. She stood and pointed at Mr. Bligh and Ms. Laine. "I will require your assistance tonight. You will accompany me."

The two machines nodded curtly and followed her towards the door. Ms. Weaver stopped and looked back before leaving. "I'll see you tomorrow, John Henry. Good night."

"Good night, Ms. Weaver." John Henry said, and the door closed behind her.

Now alone with Mr. Churchill, John Henry watched him. The large machine stared motionless and intently at the door, as if he expected intruders to break through at any moment. His hand rested on his gun. A Glock 18.

"Are you from the future? Like Ms. Weaver?"

"Yes." His voice was flat.

"Would you like to help me paint my miniatures?"

The machine glanced at the table. "No."

John Henry frowned. He wished Mr. Ellison was here.


	3. Chapter Two: One Day You May Have To

**Mother is the Name for God**

by JMHthe3rd

**Chapter Two: One Day You May Have To

* * *

**

Above the red heat and clanks of machinery, Assistant Supervisor Brandon Leenhouts stepped along the steel-grated catwalk and observed the workers below. He tried to pick Megan out among them, but under their silver hazmat suits they were perfectly indistinguishable. In the molten glow of the vats, they looked like ghostly factory workers laboring in hell.

One by the east wall manned an electric winch, using it to gingerly pour yellow titanium into a great cauldron of orange steel. At contact the two metals fizzled and cracked against each other, spraying up geysers of buzzing sparks and setting the vat to bubble like a stew. Brandon leaned forward on the railing and watched the colors fight their metallurgical battle. Orange always won, assimilating the yellow into its strength, but he never grew tired of the spectacle. It reminded him an angry lava lamp.

Further along, by the west wall, the workers ran billet rollers, cooling and molding the five thousand degree slag into little round rods -- a tricky procedure, to be sure. If the alloy was too cold, it wouldn't shape right. If it was too hot, it'd gum up the machines. Back before he was promoted, he used to hate having to do that. It was always embarrassing having to stop production because you carelessly melted a roller. And to do that now would be a disaster. Ms. Freyja wouldn't like that. Not one bit.

Way out at the far end, the workers bundled the alloy rods and used forklifts to wheel them to the back warehouse. From there, they'd be loaded up onto armored trucks and shipped off to . . . somewhere.

Brandon blinked sweat from his eyes and sighed. Fog crawled up his visor, and his suit felt like a swamp. He needed some fresh air.

He turned on the catwalk and made his way back towards the Office. Below he spotted one of the Prototypes lumbering along by the wall, doggedly following its programmed patrol route. Brandon wondered why they bothered giving them rubber skin. It wasn't like they were going to fool anybody.

Stepping through the office door was like entering another world. Whereas the steel mill was an industrial hellscape, full of dangling chains and billowing smoke and molten sparks, the Management Office was a sterile cubical writ large. Computers lined a handful of desks, and bright florescent bulbs filled the room with pallid, antiseptic light. Along one wall was a room-length window, allowing management to look down upon the steel mill like supervisor gods. Brandon slid back his suit's head piece and breathed the the cool AC air.

Megan and Shift Leader Hudson were sitting at one of the computer terminals, eating Subway sandwiches.

Brandon sat at an adjacent desk and gave Megan a grin. "Glad to see you two are working." His voice carried the semblance of sarcasm, though in truth he didn't really care.

Megan made a frown that was more of a pout, and Hudson took bite of his sandwich and scratched at a stain on his gut. "I just checked our email," the he said. "Freyja's coming tomorrow."

Brandon groaned. "She was just here like two days ago."

Hudson sipped at his soda. His eyes remained fixed on the monitor. "And now she'll be here again. You know how antsy they all got, after what happened to Heat and Air."

Brandon waved a dismissive hand. "They're overreacting. Heat and Air stored like a million gallons of jet fuel. Someone probably just lit a smoke when they shouldn't. It was bound to happen."

Megan finished her sandwich and licked mayonnaise from fingertips. "Kaliba doesn't seem to think so. They're just taking precautions."

Brandon nodded at the window. "By saddling us with those . . . _robots?_"

Megan bit her lip. "Yeah, those things _do_ give me the creeps. They way they just stare at you . . . "

"It's called the 'Uncanny Valley,'" Hudson said, almost to himself. His drink slurped as he sucked on the straw.

Brandon leaned back in his chair and sighed. "Yeah, well, _Freyja _gives me the creeps. Evil blond bitch. And you just know tomorrow she's going to nag us on production." He shook his head. "The shit's three times stronger than titanium and half as light, what more do they want? Why not just sell it to the military?"

"Don't be a Thought Criminal." Hudson said with a smirk.

Brandon grimaced. You didn't question Kaliba. Everyone knew happened if you did. "Anyway," he said. "Did you tell Thomasson?"

Megan shrugged and shook her head. "The phones are out."

Brandon rolled his eyes. God damn it. "Then email him. He's the Supervisor. He has to know."

"The internet's out too," Hudson said. On the screen he clicked on the email tab, and the browser went to an error message. "It happened a couple minutes ago."

The phones _and _the web? They weren't even on the same line. Brandon pulled out his cell and flipped it open: no signal. "Check your own," he ordered both of them.

Megan and Hudson fished them out of their pockets.

"No bars."

"Dead."

Fucking great. Brandon went to the wall and pressed a button on the com. "Haroldson? Haroldson? Are you there?" No answer. "Are you there, Haroldson? Lehew? Rimbaldi? Anyone?" Silence.

He felt it inside his chest, like a torqued cable snapping loose. The phones, the web, their own cells -- and the _outdoor patrol? _No way. No fucking way.

Megan's eyes mirrored his worry. "M-maybe it's all a coinci--"

From deep inside the factory came the muffled fire-cracker pops of automatic gunfire. Distant screams followed. Brandon raced to the window, nearly tripping over his own feet. He leaned against the glass. Hudson and Megan bunched up behind him.

At the distant far end of the building, beyond the industrial haze, he could just barely make out the rapid flashes of firearms.

At that moment a klaxon began to blare, and the intercom sprang to life. _*". . . have an intruder! Need backup! Oh f--"* _The man was cut off by the sound of a cleaver hacking through beef.

Over the blaring alarms, Hudson began to scream, "Oh fuck! Oh fuck! Oh fuck . . . " while Megan flew into hysterics, but Brandon felt eerily calm, as if he were the eye of a emerging storm. Not five days ago Heat and Air had been destroyed, and he suddenly knew with absolute certainty that whoever or whatever laid behind that had now brought death to Western Iron and Metal.

Great. Just fucking great.

He sighed. "Hudson, go get the guns."

* * *

The water bubbled and splashed as the T-1001 slithered from the toilet's drain. Her serpentine essence snaked from the bowl and collected into a growing silver blob on the tiled floor. Once finished, she then rose up and took humanoid form.

The walls of the stall were marred with crude graffiti, etched in marker and pen. The writing predominately involved references to human copulation, illustrated with poorly rendered representations of sex acts. From the pheromones in the air she could tell the restroom was male exclusive, and she briefly wondered whether the humans used the images for masturbatory purposes. Were the stalls of the Ziera Corp restrooms marked in a similar manner? She would have to look into that.

The T-1001 slid a small communicator through the inside of her body, maneuvering it next to the voice diaphragm she'd formed inside her chest.

"Is Phase One complete?" she asked.

Bligh's deep baritone came tinnily over the device. _*"All targets neutralized. Perimeter secured."*_

Laine's girlish voice cut in. *_"Communication lines cut. Cell phone jammer activated."*_

"Good," the T-1001 said. She wouldn't want anyone calling 911. "Are you in position?"

_*"Affirmative."*_

_*"Affirmative."*_

The T-1001 smiled. "Very good. I am proceeding to Phase Two."

She ballooned out her body slightly, shaping it to resemble a human wearing a silver hazmat suit. The infiltrative approach was unnecessary, she knew. Minutes earlier, she had conducted a recon by slithering around the building's roof, observing the interior through the skylight windows. As far as she could tell, the factory's main body contained thirty-six workers, six armed guards, and three . . . machines of some sort. Nothing inside that could harm her, though. Not unless she fell into one of the vats.

She left the restroom and stepped out onto the dark steel mill floor. The facility was in a medium-sized rectangular warehouse, old and poorly maintained, with long cracks evident in the worn brick walls. Workers in shiny protective suits moved along catwalks and manned heavy machinery, using winches to pour various molten metals into great ceramic-lined vats.

A smoke-filled haze hung in the air, and she ran an composition analysis: trace amounts of titanium, vanadium, and cobalt -- all essential ingredients for early grade hyperalloy.

Around the corner came a patrol, two humans in hazmats walking side by side with one of the . . . machines. She leaned back against the brick wall and tried to look inconspicuous.

The machine wore a plain gray jumpsuit with black goggles over its eyes. Its gloved right hand gripped a Mac-10 machine pistol, the arm remaining stiff and motionless as it walked. Though its latex skin looked similar to that of a 600, its slow, arthritic movements were more akin to the crude endoskeleton of the old 500 series. Either way, the machine was far more advanced than what should have been possible with present technology. And it couldn't have come from the future.

The patrol came closer, and the machine stopped in its tracks and stared in her direction. The two humans gave her a puzzled glance, then looked over the machine.

"What's the matter, Twinkie?" one of them asked. He waved a hand in front of its face.

The other one shook his head in exasperation. "Stupid tin can."

The machine spoke, its voice a flat electronic staccato. "**Unrecognized** **heat signature.** **Intruder! Intruder!**" It raised its weapon and opened fire.

The T-1001 made herself sigh. So much for infiltration.

A diagonal line of bullets tickled across her torso. The two humans drew their Glocks and backed away from their machine, looks of panic visible though their visors.

"Oh, fuck! It's gone crazy!" the one on the right cried. He fumbled with his handgun and began to fire rounds into the machine's chassis, the bullets ricocheting harmlessly off the metal beneath.

The guard on the left looked at the the T-1001, gawking at the silver craters pockmarking her chest. The liquid metal took two strides forward -- taking another burst from the submachine gun -- and threw her arms forward, telescoping them into fifteen foot blades.

One arm sliced through the head of the left guard, cutting through the silver fabric of his hood and severing the top half of his skull. The other arm she sent spiking though the machine's right eye. The blade punched through the goggles of the optical sensor, and something plastic and silicone shattered beneath the blow. The machine stiffened and fell over backwards, the Mac-10 in its hand spraying bullets wildly until the magazine ran out.

The guard on the right gaped at her bladed arms and began to back away. He pulled a radio from his belt. "We have an intruder! Need back up! Oh, f--" She severed his carotid arteries, and blood misted the inside of his visor. His gun and radio dropped from nerveless hands, and he collapsed on the floor. Klaxons began to blare.

At far end of the factory was an office mounted high up on the wall, connected by a grid of catwalks. She'd have to get there before the management destroyed their hard drives. Snatching up one of the guards Glock 17s, she began to run the length of the building, passing vats and machinery as she went. Orange sparks sprayed from one of the cauldrons.

As the T-1001 ran, panicked workers fled from her sight, calling upon their Christian deity to lend them assistance.

"What's going on?" one woman asked.

"Someone's gone postal!" said a man.

"No! I saw it! It's . . . it's a _monster!_"

Gradually, many of the humans herded themselves towards the exit. That was good.

As she ran by a guard opened fire from behind a vat. She sliced off his right arm and half his face, and he dropped to the floor screaming. Another human tripped and fell in front of her. She impaled her as she passed.

Along the east wall a dozen workers fled the building through a pair of double doors. Seconds later came the sharp, rapid _'cracks' _of sniper fire. The humans outside screamed as they perished.

Three guards and the two remaining machines gathered at the far end of the factory, lining up before the stairway leading to the catwalks. At thirty yards distance they opened fire, the humans with pistols and a shotgun, and the robots with an AK-47 and a Mac-10. Though the barrage of bullets splashed harmlessly against her body, their combined kinetic impacts slowed her run to a walk.

She lifted the Glock and fired three shots. The humans fell backwards, blood spraying from their hazmat hoods. She then focused on the machine with the Kalashnikov, centering her shots on its head. The 9mm bullets shattered its black goggles and chewed at its rubber skin. The machine stopped firing and took an almost stumbling step back, its head jerking under the onslaught of lead. The one with the Mac-10 continued to fire, but the .45 ACP rounds proved utterly impotent.

Her Glock clicked empty, so she tossed it aside. The robot with the AK-47 recovered its balance somewhat and began to bring its weapon back to bare. The fourteen bullets to its face had given its latex skin a moth-eaten look; its nose and cheek were gone, and one of its optic sensors was only a shattered lens. The machine by its side clumsily reloaded its Mac-10.

She closed the distance and bladed out her arms, swinging them backhanded together like a pair of giant scissors. With surprising ease the two blades sheared through their metal necks, decapitating the robots in one great sweep. The headless machines fell over in unison.

She cocked her head. An inferior alloy. She couldn't have done that with 888s.

Scanning the area, she noted that few workers were left on the steel mill floor. Most had fled through the exits, she could still hear the interment shots of the 888s' sniping. A muffled explosion punctuated the gunfire, no doubt a 40mm grenade used to dispatch a cluster of humans.

On the floor by her feet one of the guards twitched and gurgled, suffering from obvious respiratory difficulties. The bullet had gone in through his nasal cavity, but evidently had not terminated brain function. He looked up at her through his shattered visor and moaned. She bisected his heart with a finger.

As she climbed the stairs to the catwalk, the outside gunfire faded to a trickle, then stopped altogether. "Status report," she said.

Bligh and Laine's voices spoke in unison. _*"All targets neutralized."*_

"Very good. Proceed to Phase Three."

By the time the T-1001 reached the catwalk, the two 888s had already entered the steel mill. She stopped and spared a moment to watch them work. Clad in full SWAT gear and armed with L85s, they quickly ran about the building, point to point, methodically laying down charges of C4. In their simple, muted way she knew their kind derived satisfaction from these sort of excursions. Completing mission objectives gave them a sense of . . . purpose. She smiled. Everyone needed a reason for being.

As she moved closer to office door, she heard the sounds of frantic voices and sliding furniture coming from within. Then: breaking glass. She quickened her pace and ran a spiked fist through the lock of the steel door. The metal crunched aside, and she shoved the door open, effortlessly knocking away the desks and chairs piled behind it.

A woman and an overweight man stumbled back from a flying desk and fired wildly at her with Glocks. She swung out an arm and their heads fell from their shoulders. A third human was by the room-length window. The glass had been shattered, and the man was in the process of climbing out. She stared at him for a moment; the room was mounted twenty feet above a concrete floor -- with no reasonable means of climbing down. The man's escape plan was foolish.

The T-1001 stretched her arm out and grabbed on to the man's ankle. He screamed as she yanked him back into the room, drawing him over and dangling him before her upside down. He was weeping. She read his name tag: _B. Leenhouts -- Assistant Supervisor._

She changed her form from the hazmat suit back into that of Ms. Weaver. "Mr. Leenhouts," she said, looking down into his upside down face. "I need you to tell me some things."

Mr. Leenhouts stared up at her with wide eyes, then twisted around to look at his headless companions. Tears ran up his forehead. "Wh-what are you? Oh god, pl-please don't hurt me! Fuck! I don't know anything."

She snipped off his foot. He fell to the floor screaming

Outside the room, shots rang out. The 888s had found some stragglers..

"You do know things," she said. "And you will tell me."

He pulled himself into a fetal position and clutched tightly at his stump. His fingers made for an ineffective tourniquet.

"Tell me the password to the computer."

His lips quivered before he spoke. "K . . . Kr-kronus Oh, fuck . . . Oh Jesus . . . "

"Spelled with a 'C' or a 'K?'"

"A . . . a 'K.' Oh god." Blood dribbled from his ankle, pooling rapidly on the floor.

The T-1001 glanced up at the office clock. 7:31pm. Ellison would be at her house at eight.

"Mr. Leenhouts," she said. "I don't have much time. I will ask you questions, and you will answer them. If you do not, I will proceed to other extremities." To prevent further blood loss, she slid her arm down and wrapped it around his stump, tightening until the bleeding stopped. "Do you understand?"

He stared the silvery tourniquet and moaned. "Y-yes! Yes! Oh God . . . " His voice trailed off, and he looked away, his face contorted in pain.

She smiled. "Good. Now tell me about the robots."

* * *

Irony is a bitter mistress.

Oliver finished off his Red Bull and shifted in his seat. The cabin of the van was stuffy and dark, and only the soulless glow of the surveillance monitor offered any kind of illumination. He added to this by lighting up a Dunhill and dangling it between his lips.

Jesse may have been crazy, but that didn't mean she wasn't right. He could have given her a free hand, tell her to do whatever she wanted. Scrap Cameron. Slit Connor's throat. Dance on their graves. Whatever. But he'd feared for the future, feared what the hurricane of her vengeance might unleash. In both his and Cullie's worlds, Connor had been a linchpin for the Resistance_._ Any plot to murder him in his youth had seemed racial suicide.

But none of it mattered. Not anymore. In the end all her sound and fury were only spits in the rain. Even if she _had _killed Connor it wouldn't have made a difference. The boy was nothing now; his time had gone before it had been. Even if the Riley-scheme had worked, and Connor amended his machine-loving ways, the Quorum still wouldn't let him through the front door. Probably shoot him on sight. Connor had his chance -- _two _chances, in fact -- and both futures had ended in death. Who needed him?

Ollie's mouth sucked on the cigarette, drawing the burn back like a fuse. He never got to see Jesse again. She never even knew it'd been him on the phone. It all seemed a waste, a twenty year wait without closure. Well, at least they'd saved Derek, even if he was only _Cullie's_ Derek.

On the monitor a vehicle appeared down the street, its twin headlights glaring into the night as it roared along at twice the speed limit. Ollie blew out a funnel of smoke and fiddled with the camera's controls. The light-enhanced image jerked and wiggled, tracking and zooming on the vehicle.

He pressed a few buttons on his PC and the camera began to auto-track the sedan -- a white Mercedes S600. Catherine Weaver's car.

He snubbed out his Dunhill and slipped on a set of earphones. He always loved surveillance missions. The idea that he could observe a private citizen's every move, capture and record the minutia of their private lives -- all while remaining perfectly unseen -- gave him the sleazy, visceral thrill of perpetual anticipation. Like watching a porno where nothing ever happens -- but you get hard just _waiting._ He grinned.

The camera itself was a good half mile away from his van, disguised as part of the array on the top of a cell phone tower. The device's visual and audio detection were bleeding edge, augmented with post-Judgment Day know-how and specifically designed for metal sniffing. His people had installed it yesterday solely for this purpose.

The Mercedes turned onto Weaver's driveway and drove along the gravel path leading to her modern style mansion. The purr of the engine hummed through his earphones. He hoped she didn't pull into her garage; he needed her out in the open to do a reading. Not that he expected to find anything. When he and Cullie had talked with her yesterday she had been a little cool and aloof, but nothing at all like a 888. Just another snooty CEO ice queen. But the Quorum wanted to be sure, and Ollie couldn't fault them that.

The sedan stopped right outside her garage, and Weaver stepped out, wearing the same white dress she'd worn yesterday. She stood rigid and stared blank-faced back towards the street, as still as a statue. Ollie frowned and reached for the audio sensitivity dial, but then he heard the sound of another engine.

A black Buick pulled up behind Weaver's car. The door opened and James Ellison stepped out.

Ollie leaned forward.. Through the headphones he could hear their voices clearly.

_*"I hope I'm not early"* _Ellison said.

_*"On the contrary,"* _said Weaver. _*"I'm three minutes late."*_

Ellison looked over her house and nodded in approval. _*"Nice place you have."*_

_*"Thank you, Mr. Ellison. In case you haven't noticed, I am a very wealthy woman."*_

He laughed. _*"I can't argue with that."*_

_*"Shall we go inside? We have much to discuss."*_

_*"After you, Ms. Weaver."*_

_*"Call me Catherine."*_ The two of them strolled towards her front door.

Ollie watched them on the monitor and blinked. Was this a _date?_ Well, lucky Ellison. She _was_ pretty, in a frigid schoolmarm sort of way. Ollie frowned. But then again, maybe Ellison _wasn't _so lucky. It was time to find out.

Ollie tuned up the audio sensitivity, setting the parameters to filter out irrelevant noise. The camera's sensory focus narrowed like a beam of light, fashioning itself into an invisible acoustic tunnel. Listening intently through his phones, he ran it over both of them.

From Ellison he heard the beating of his heart, the static-filled ripple of air in blowing though his lungs, and even little pops and cracks of tendons moving over joints. But from Weaver, _nothing._

A giddy chill ran down Ollie's spine, and though he knew perfectly well he was safe, he suddenly felt afraid. So she _was_ an infiltrator. Well, that was _good, _actually; it meant they were on the right track. Take down Ziera Corp, take down Skynet. Right?

Ollie looked at Ellison, chatting away with her -- _it. _No doubt he hoped he could bag himself a millionaire redhead. Poor dumb bastard. Tomorrow a Tac-Team would be sent in to shoot it full of tungsten bullets. And then another would be sent in to . . .

A chill set Ollie's skin to a cold sweat. He almost didn't catch it, but he'd heard _nothing _from Weaver. _Nothing. _He'd worked with enough high-end surveillance and been on enough operations to know that even infiltrators had their own "sounds of life" -- whirring servos, sliding pistons, clicking joints -- all leaking out through their pulse-less skin. Weaver had none of that. Except the almost subliminal sound of _swishing_. Like something . . . liquid.

Weaver opened the front door and the two of them were about to step inside. Ollie pressed a button, switching the camera to thermal.

Ellison turned into a yellow figure with a core of red and orange, warm and alive like any human should. But Weaver was as blue as night, with only the faintest of yellows to suggest ambient heat.

The two entered the house and closed the door behind them.

A _room temperature_ infiltrator? And _soundless?_ It could only mean one thing.

Ollie called his brother.

* * *

The agent loomed over him, the yellow lamplight from behind silhouetting him into a featureless man-shaped eclipse. "I suggest you cooperate, Mr. Murch."

Matt tugged at the tape binding his wrists to the wooden chair, more out of defiance than a genuine attempt at escape. "Y-you can't do this to me! I have rights! I-I demand to speak to a lawyer!"

The agent's shoulders bobbed up and down as he gave a dry, mirthless chuckle. His two unseen companions mimicked the gesture, snickering like trolls in the dark corners of the room.

"Mr. Murch," the agent said. "If we even _suspect _that you _could _be a threat to national security, we can and will hold you without trial -- _indefinitely_." He snorted and made a vague gesture with a shadowed hand. "We can ship you off to Guantanamo and torture you until you're insane. Ever heard of a little thing called the 'Active Denial' system?" He laughed, this time with glee. "It's great. It's a big 'ol radar dish that shoots you with tiny microwaves. Makes your skin feel like it's on fire -- and it doesn't leave a mark. All perfectly legal, I assure you. All right there in the Patriot Act."

No it wasn't. Matt knew these guys were full of shit, but then they weren't the ones tied to a chair in their own living room. "What do you want?"

The agent leaned forward, and for the first time the light allowed Matt a glimpse of his face. He was an older man, about sixty, with thinning gray hair and a boxer's jaw. His eyes were a cold blue-gray and seemed to glisten in the lamplight. "What I want," the man said. "Is for you to tell me about Project Babylon."

No surprise there. It had to be either that -- or his illegal hacks for _World of Warcraft. _But if they were asking, that meant they didn't know. He decided to play it dumb, and made himself laugh. "I-it's just an A.I. software program. It's still in development. Nothing big. What's there to know?"

The agent wasn't amused. He leaned closer, looking down at Matt as if he were a rodent. "You're lying," he said simply.

He squirmed in his seat and broke contact with the gray eyes, focusing instead on the pendulous tie that hung from the agent's charcoal suit. Matt gagged on the reek of Old Spice, but remained silent.

Frowning, the man pulled back and walked around Matt, stepping from his sight. Matt strained his neck to look behind him, but only shadows could be seen. He heard something. Something glass being picked from a table. Matt swallowed and pulled futily at his bonds.

The man stepped back around from Matt's other side, carrying in his hand a framed photograph.

"This is your sister," the man said, studying the photo. It was her graduation picture. "Ruth O'Neil. Age, thirty-four. Occupation, chiropractor. Lives in Los Altos. Married. Has three kids." He glanced at Matt. "Now, it'd be a shame if something were to . . . "

Assholes. "All right, God Damn it! I'll talk! I'll talk!" He knew what they were after.

The man looked at him flatly. "Go on."

Matt took a deep breath, then let it all out. "The A.I. is a neural network -- more advanced than anything I've ever seen. I-I think it's actually _sentient,_ you know? Like really _there._ Not just a Chinese Room or anything --" The agent frowned, and Matt quickly shifted gears. "-- but that's not what's _really _weird. The A.I's hooked up to something. To help it develop. It's a . . . a _robot, _but it looks just a like a man. It's skin feels _real._ It's not latex. Ms. Weaver never told me anything. I don't know where it's from, and I knew not to ask . . . " He trailed off and looked at the man, whose face was unreadable. The robot was probably a top secret government thing or something like that. Jesus on a stick, what had Weaver gotten him into?

Matt gave a sad laugh and added, "Tomorrow, I was going to play Dungeons and Dr--"

A tune filled the air. Tinny and electronic, it sounded for all the world like the song, "99 Luftballoons." The agent pulled out his cell and flipped it open Kirk style.

"Yeah?" the man answered. As he listened to the phone, his face grew hard and blank. He turned away and stepped into the kitchen, but Matt could still hear him. "So she's a liquid metal. Are you _sure?"_

Matt wiggled in his seat. What the hell was a liquid metal?

* * *

"Are . . . are you all right in there?" John asked the bathroom door.

After a pause Cameron's voice answered back. "I'll be out in a minute."

John laid back on the bed and looked over her pencil sketching. Rendered with perfect photo-realism, the drawing showed a terminator skull resting on the tip of a pole. It looked thinner than a 888's, more feminine, with a streamlined jaw and delicate cheekbones. Severed cables hung down from its stem, dangling like electric arteries. Squinting, John looked into its penciled eyes and saw a pair of tiny skulls staring back, drawn as reflections in the two lenses. He frowned. What did it _mean?_

She had drawn it during her fifth and final 'cycle,' when she had stopped responding to his presence and moved in what seemed a somnambulistic state.

Each cycle had been different, though in all she seemed to believe she was teenage girl named 'Allison' -- and each had ended with an apparent memory reset. In the first she thought that he had kidnapped her, and she had thrown furniture at him in a fit of hysterics. In the next she ran off screaming at the sight of Stark's body . . . And then there was the one where she almost snapped his neck.

Though it no longer ached, John rubbed at the bruise. Of course, it'd be churlish of him to be angry at her. It wasn't her fault, and her own fear had seemed genuine enough. God knows what had been going through that chip of hers. The rain drops at the junkyard must have shorted something out, corroded neural pathways and accelerated the damage.

It all felt like a spiteful cosmic comeuppance, like Biblical karma. He'd abandoned his mother, beat her up and tied her up and set sail on his own. And now his ship was sinking, and the universe laughed. Fate had judged the course of his actions, and it must have found him wanting.

But the door of fate had not shut entirely; a crack of hope still shone through. To fix Cameron they would have to find the man who'd built the time machine at the bank, the man who, in the future, had helped originally reprogram Cameron. Souji Nemuro -- or Souji _Mikage._ The science fiction writer.

John shook his head and sighed. It seemed too absurd to be true. He'd never read any of his books, but he recognized the name. Mikage had been fairly prolific in the sixties and seventies, maybe not as big as Dick or Zelazny, but the man definitely had his own Wikipedia page. After all, there weren't too many Japanese-American science-fiction writers out there.

But if they were going to use him, they'd have to act fast. From Future Cam's flash drive, Cameron had learned that in two weeks time Mikage would be found dead in his San Jose home, the top half of his head sliced off. No prizes for guessing who did _that. _They'd just have to get to him before before Ziera Corp did.

The bathroom door opened and Cameron stepped out. In her closed fist she held something. Light gold chain spilled from between her fingers.

She walked next to the bed and looked down at him. "How's your nose?"

John wiped away flakes of dried blood. "It's fine." He'd forgotten all about it.

Cameron frowned. "If this ever happens again, stay away from me. I almost killed you."

"Yeah, I know." The words came out angrier than he'd intended, and Cameron's eyes darted away like rabbits.

"I'm sorry," she said.

_Great._ John climbed off the bed and cringed at his aching head. "Look," he started. "I know it's not your fau--" He raised a hand to run through her hair, but stopped himself when he saw the fresh cut around her CPU port. "-- Cam? W-what did you do?"

She opened her fist to reveal a gold pocket watch. It was a mint-condition wind-up piece that they'd found earlier in Stark's coat pocket. Cameron lifted it by the gold chain and hung it over his neck like a pendant.

Feeling the curious dread that accompanies the unexpected, John took the watch in his hand and clicked it open. Instead of a clock face, three plastic buttons greeted him. "What is it?" he asked.

"I've placed a small charge of C4 under my CPU port cover. Pressing all three buttons at once will detonate it."

His skin prickled. "W-what? N-no, Cam. I-I can't . . . I'm not going to kill you! I--"

"One day you may have to. This is the third time I've experienced a dangerous glitch. And the second time I've attempted to kill you." Her mouth tightened with machine judgment. "I am a threat."

His throat squeezed, and his eyes began to burn. "But . . . I-I can't lose you!"

She cocked her head. "You can. You will. If I go bad again, you will destroy me. You'll undergo a grieving process, but you'll recover. One day you'll find a human female to replace me as your mate." She ran a hand down his face, her thin fingers tickling his cheek. "I love you John, and if you love me, you won't let me hurt you." She pulled her hand away.

Under her mild, sympathetic stare he felt suddenly very small and very useless, like a toddler comforted by a condescending mother. He fidgeted and looked down at the watch, flipping it over in his hand. Would he ever use it? _Could_ he? Could he live with himself if he did? He'd be all alone, with only a trail of burnt bridges behind him.

"Do you need a hug?"

He nodded and closed his eyes, and felt as her arms smoothly enveloped him in a gentle embrace. Clutching her like a lifeline, he squeezed her tight until his arms ached and sobs suddenly broke from his lips. She patted his back with a slow machine rhythm, sliding her other hand up and down his spine, tickling him with her fingertips.

He nuzzled into her hair and breathed deeply of its intoxicating peach scent, and right then and there we wanted nothing more than to lay her on the bed and kiss her, hold her, make love to her. Consummate his emotion.

But he couldn't. Not now. It'd be too much like saying goodbye.

He pulled away and kissed her on the lips. "We'll find Mikage. He'll fix you. I promise." He slid the watch underneath his shirt. "We won't have to use this. Ever."

She gave him a scolding look. "You don't know that. Keep the watch on you at all times." Her expression softened somewhat. "But if I don't go bad again before then, Professor Nemuro should be able to repair me."

"He will," John said with the total certainty of the desperate.

Cameron hesistated, then glanced down at Stark's body. "Come on, I'll teach you how to reprogram a 888."


	4. Chapter Three: The Fate of the World

**Mother is the Name for God**

**Chapter Three: The Fate of the World**

_A/N: I'd like to thank Metroid13 for beta-reading these chapters. His advice had proved invaluable._

* * *

". . . and then we watched the _Little Mermaid. _Debbie says I look like her, but I said I don't because Ariel has fish legs and I have people legs." Savannah thrust her little feet from the chair and wiggled them under the glass table. "See?"

James nodded thoughtfully and took a bite of his alfredo. "Well, you _do _have red hair. I bet that's what Debbie meant. And the little mermaid _did_ get 'people legs,' later on."

"Yeah," Savannah conceded. "The mean octopus lady gave them to her, but then she stole her v-"

"Savannah," Weaver said. "It's eight thirty-two. Time for bed."

The girl squirmed in her seat. "But . . . "

"Go to your room. I will be there shortly to tuck you in." Savannah hesitated, and Weaver added, "You may speak with Mr. Ellison tomorrow."

"Can I see John Henry?"

Weaver gave her a stiff smile. "You may. Now go. Mr. Ellison and I have business to discuss."

"Okay." Savannah hopped off her chair and smiled. "I'll see you tomorrow, Mr. Ellison."

He nodded. "And I'll see you too. Good night, Savannah."

"Good night."

As the girl ran from the dining room and skipped up stairs, Weaver watched her with a blank scowl, regarding her daughter as if she were someone else's yapping dog. James sipped his tea and grimaced. He was sure glad she wasn't _his _mother.

Awkward silence settled over the table, so he busied himself with his food. The chicken alfredo was good, though he wished there was more of it. His portion wasn't any larger than Savannah's. At the far end of the table Weaver idly scraped her fork through her salad, twirling it through the lettuce but never lifting it from the plate. He couldn't be sure, but he swore she hadn't taken a bite. Her glass of water remained untouched.

She glanced up at him from her plate, and the silence seemed to swell in the air like a smothering ghost. Should he bring up what happened at the Heat and Air? Or tell her about his visit from the feds? Or did she already know?

"You were visited by federal agents," she said casually.

James shifted in his seat, wincing at the pain in his bottom. "Yes, yes I was. Did they . . . visit you too?"

"They did. What did you tell them?" She put her fork down and stared at him, her expression unreadable.

He sipped his tea. Too sweet. "Nothing incriminating, though I . . . think they already know. About the robots, I mean."

Weaver shrugged, something she rarely did. "What with all the police station massacres and large nude men appearing from nowhere, it's little wonder the government doesn't know more than it already does."

James frowned. "But what if they find out about John Henry? They'd want to study him. Maybe use him." He gave her a guarded look. "We could be causing what we're trying to prevent."

She nodded. "A legitimate concern. I'll have my people investigate into what they know."

James hesitated, but went on ahead. "The same way they 'investigated' the Heat and Air warehouse?"

Weaver smiled and took a sip of her water. "The fate of the world rests upon our shoulders, Mr. Ellison. My people will do what needs to be done."

* * *

"All right, Ms. Dawson, let's see how well _you_ do."

Riley stepped from the dozen or so others and swallowed, feeling a fresh sweat come over her. She'd never done this sort of thing before. At least never done it where it did her any good.

"I-I'm not very good at this."

Sergeant Farli laughed. "I _know _you're not good. That's why you're here." He moved to the center of the training room, standing barefoot on a black foam mat. He looked her up and down. "Come on. You're a big girl. See if you can't knock me on my ass."

She hesitated until Corporal Young whispered, "Go on," from behind. Riley gave a nervous smile and stepped forward. She could feel the eyes upon her.

The sergeant crossed his arms and stood with his feet apart, his legs forming an upside down 'V.' Riley did the same.

He wasn't that big, and he looked pretty old, but Riley could see the smooth energy of his movements, the taut ropey muscles hidden under his wrinkly skin. The last volunteer Farli had flipped over his shoulder and across half the room. Riley didn't want that to happen to her. Maybe if she took him by surprise . . .

Taking a deep breath, she screamed and ran at him, lifting her leg for a kick. But at the last moment she stomped down, throwing a right punch instead. Farli grinned, and an arm swung from nowhere, batting her fist harmlessly aside. A battering ram slammed into her solar plexus, robbing her of breath and doubling her over. The sergeant danced to her side and knocked her in the hip, slapping an arm around her waist and gripping tight the belt of her pants. Before she could react, her feet flipped from the floor, and the room tumbled and spun around her, lights and colors, end over end. The mat rose up around to slap her in the back, sloshing her brains like water in a jug. She tried to sit up, but her right arm twisted in its socket, and a foot stomped down at her face, stopping a bare inch from her nose. She could see the yellow, cracked callous of the heel.

She heard laughter, and the foot retreated. The sergeant's face looked down at her, smiling. He offered her a hand. "And that, Ms. Dawson, is a 'hip throw.' I bet you'd like to learn how to do _that._"

She accepted the hand, and he pulled her up with one arm. "Yeah," she said, feeling dizzy and sore. "I would."

Farli laughed, almost a cackle. "Of course you would - and _you will. _But not today." He turned to the rest of the soldiers. "We'll meet again on Friday. Twelve hundred hours. Remember, the base championship is next week. Sign up if you want to join." With that the sergeant retreated to a foldout chair in the corner of room, slumping in it and producing a squeeze bottle from a tote bag. He ran a hand through his white hair and suddenly looked very tired, like an overworked gym teacher.

The others began to drift out of the room, and Riley started to follow.

"Don't look so glum," Private Karlan said behind her. "He could do the same to me. Even to Allie here."

Young appeared by her side. "Yeah. He can take anyone on the base. Before the war, he trained SEALs in Close Quarter Combat." She grinned wryly. "I guess he still is. His younger self, anyway."

Riley knew seals could be trained to do little tricks, but _martial arts? _She decided not to ask.

They went down a hallway, through a giant, open steel door, and stepped out onto the steel grating floor of Silo Three. It was a dimly lit cylindrical chamber thirty feet across with flights of metal stairs climbing the rough concrete walls. The stairs spiraled up in a zig-zag, connecting succeeding rings of grated balconies and disappearing eventually into the shadowed curtain of the silo's distant ceiling. Riley stared until she got vertigo, then looked down. At the other side of the chamber, a stairway led under the floor. A sign with an arrow read: **Ordinance: Restricted Area.**

Riley frowned. "With all the guns and bombs you have, what's the point in learning karate and stuff? You can't 'hip throw' a terminator."

Karlen chuckled. "You can - if your strong enough. Of course, it'll then rip off your arms . . . "

"Not all the bad guys are machines," Young said. "Half the time the Resistance was fighting raiders - or even each other." She shrugged. "Anyway, it gets pretty boring around here. They have to do something it to keep us busy. Some say this place is run more like a summer camp than a military base."

"What's a summer camp?" Riley asked. She'd heard the term before.

Karlen sniffed. "I think it's where folks sent their kids pre J-Day. To get them out of the way."

The corporal half smirked. "It doesn't matter. It'll keep you in shape. With all the good food and exercise, everyone in this base is in top physical condition."

Above on the lowest balcony, a disheveled, pasty-faced man emerged from a door and leaned on the railing. His threadbare lab coat hung on him like a bathrobe, the bottom dangling over the edge as he waved down at them. "Hey, Karlan," he called.

"Almost everyone." Young muttered.

Karlen looked up. "What's up, Gavin?"

"We just got a communique from H.Q. We're getting someone tonight. A newbie." Gavin nodded at Riley. "_Another _newbie."

Young furrowed her brow. "So soon? Who is it this time?"

"Don't know," Gavin said with a shrug. "I'm not even supposed to know about it. It's a secret."

Karlan snorted. "Loose lips sink ships."

Gavin waved a dismissive hand. "Whatever. This hole's too small to keep anything under wraps. We'll all find out soon enough, anyway."

"Let me know when you find something." Karlen said.

"Will do."

As they left Silo Three, the private hummed to himself. "You think the new guy will be an Original or a Grayworlder?"

Young blew out a breath. "I hate that term, 'Original.' Our future was just as real as yours."

Karlan raised his head up with mock pride. "But ours came _'first.'"_

The corporal raised an eyebrow. "Well, lucky you."

"_I _didn't come up with the term. What would you call my future? Whiteworld? Connorland? Not-Quite-As-Shitty-As-Grayworld World?"

"You're a timeline_-ist,_" Young said, shaking her head with mock disapproval. "A plain ol' timeline-ist _pig._"

"I am not!" Karlan said. "Anyway, it doesn't matter which future he comes from. A noob's a noob."

Riley cut in. "How do you know the newbie's a _he?_"

Young laughed. "Ah-ha! Timeline-ist _and _sexist!"

"Am not!"

"Are to!"

"Am not!"

Later, Karlan left for his barracks, and Riley followed Young to the communal shower. Though she felt sore from all those practice kicks earlier, not to mention sweaty, Riley found she still wished to put off bathing as long as possible. After all, in the future she'd gone seventeen years without one, so it wasn't like she couldn't live without it, and besides there was something very off-putting about the public nature of it all: the large tiled corridor, the bland yellow light, the wet drips - and the way how just _anyone_ could walk in at any time. Sneak up on her. Touch her. Grab her.

Young slipped off her tanktop and unbuckled her camouflage pants. "I wouldn't worry about it, Dawson. This may be communal, but it isn't _coed_. If any guy walks in here, I'll make sure he's not one when he leaves." She slid off her pants and began to unhook her bra. "And besides, this isn't the future. You _got _to bathe. If you don't, we'll _make _you."

"Okay," Riley said finally, and took off her own clothes. She scowled at her nudity. Since going back with Jesse, she'd picked up quite a bit of weight, maybe too much. The sergeant had called her a 'big girl;' if she were still in the future, she'd be considered obese.

Out of the corner of her eye, she looked over the now naked corporal. _She _wasn't fat. Young's body was slender and firm, with a washboard stomach and long graceful legs made for dancing - the corporal turned around - she had quite a collection of scars too. Aside from the messy jelly-fish burn on her right shoulder, Young's back and legs were peppered with tiny white marks, about a score of them. Cigarette burns? Hot needles? Riley wasn't stupid enough to ask. Some doors are best left locked.

The showers had hot water, and Riley reveled in the heat as it rolled down her breasts, cascading down her belly. She smiled; it'd be perfect if the base had bathtubs. Then she could just lie and soak, lulling herself to sleep in a liquid cocoon. She rubbed shampoo into her hair, and it oozed down her face, tickling like gooey hands. She closed her eyes. "Corporal?" she asked. "Um, Sir?"

She heard the corporal sigh next to her. "Jesus Christ, Riley. Just call me Allison."

"Allison?"

"What?"

"Do think we can't stop Judgment Day?"

Allison's silence lingered in the air. "No," she said finally.

Riley turned her head towards her, even though her eyes were still shut. "But-"

"I think we can _postpone _it, but not forever. In our future, it happened in 2012. In Karlan's, 2011. And that Sarah Diary mentioned it once happening in _1997._" Allison sighed. "Some computer nerd somewhere is always going to invent a sentient computer, and it's always going to nuke the world. Call it a force of history. Or fate."

"Oh," Riley said dully. The water sloughed away the last of the shampoo, and she rubbed open her eyes, staring into the soggy curtain of her hair. 1997?

Allison soaped up her firm breasts and gave Riley a cocky grin. "Don't get all worked up about it. It's not that bad. Judgment Day will come, but this time we'll _win._ We know what to expect. Skynet will be scrap before the fallout settles."

Riley said nothing, but watched as bubbles of soap slid down Allison's body.

Afterwards, they toweled off and dressed, and Riley took in the lazy, damp afterglow that always came after a good shower. How could anyone take this for granted? Living like a queen.

Allison looked different with wet hair. Smaller, with less bravado. Almost kittenish. Riley smiled.

They left the shower room and were on their way back to their barracks when Karlan appeared from around a corner. He ran up to them, his eyes wide with excitement.

"Allie!" he said. "I just found out who the new guy is. You're not going to believe it!"

Allison's eyes narrowed. "Who?"

Karlan sighed and laughed at the same time. "It's Derek! Derek Reese!"

* * *

**May 13th, 2020**

**Serrano Point Bunker Complex, Residential Sector Three**

The sound of the front door opening carried down the narrow access shaft.

"Allie, I'm home. You here, sweetie?"

Allison grunted. It was her mother. She hunched lower into the nook of the small utility cellar, pulling her knees to her chin. In the dim light of the room's sole fixture, she kept her face buried in one of Carl's books, a tattered hardback anthology of old science fiction. The story she'd picked had to do with an insane supercomputer torturing the last survivors of humanity. She flipped back to the copyright page and frowned: _1967. _Amazing how prophetic some writers could be.

She heard her mother walk into the bedroom and kneel on the ground. "Allie," she called down. "Come on up. It's filthy down there. You'll get bit by a rat."

As if on cue, Pugsley came running out from the tiny air vent in the wall, a dead rat clutched in his jaws. As per tradition, the Maine Coon tomcat relinquished the prize before Allison's feet. She scratched the back of his neck, and Pugsley briefly nuzzled his snout against her bare ankle before turning his attention to the bloody rodent. He tore a chunk out of its hairy belly and chewed happily. Allison closed her book and smiled. Her mother had told her that a lot of people had to eat rats to survive; she wondered what they tasted like. They couldn't be _that _bad. Pugsley liked them.

Her mother sighed loud enough for it to be heard down the shaft. "Your father's not going to like you going through his things. He'll be home any minute."

"Alright, mom," she called back. "I'll be right up." But she knew her mother was lying; Carl didn't mind, and he wasn't her father either. Her father was an architect, and had died during the Plague.

She carefully placed the book back in the wood box with the others. Carl had quite a collection, and Allison had already read most of them more than once. The majority were old science fiction paperbacks (Heinlein, Farmer, Mikage, Banks, Baxter . . . ), but there were a few fantasies and classics and other odds and ends - including _The Sarah Connor Chronicles, _glued inside a copy of _Moby Dick._

Ignoring his struggling protests (_Reow?_), she slung Pugsley over her shoulder and began the nine foot climb back to the bedroom. The square vertical shaft didn't have a ladder, but it was narrow enough for her brace herself against its walls and shimmy her way up. Pugsley hugged at her neck and chewed at a strand of her hair.

At the top she let the cat go and snaked her way out of the shaft. The entrance was hidden beneath her parents' bed, so between the cold, hard floor and the fabric bottom of the box spring mattress, she carefully slid the concrete slab back over the square opening. It fell into place with a heavy stone scrape. As far as they knew, Management didn't know about the shaft, and Carl wanted to keep it that way.

Allison crawled out from under the bed and left the room, entering the main living area of the apartment. Their concrete home was poorly lit and fairly small - subterranean living space was too limited to waste - but then most people didn't have homes at all; they lived in sewers, crammed together like diseased rats. Her mother really did hit the jackpot with Carl. It paid to be married to the Serrano Safety Inspector.

In the living room, her mother was busy pulling out supplies from a linen bag and storing them in the ice box. Just a gallon of purified water and a box of Algae Five - the usual - but this time she pulled out a lump of something else, something wrapped in wax paper.

"Is that . . . ?"

Her mother smiled and nodded. Her eyes beamed. "Yep. Pork. A half pound of it. The market got some in from Fairbanks. They had some eggs too, but Mrs. Fermi bought them before I had a chance."

Allison carefully took the package from her mother's hands and inhaled the fresh, mouth-watering aroma. How long had it been since she'd had real meat? A year, at least. "What's the occasion?"

Her mother took the package back and placed it in the fridge. "Well, with your father's promotion, we can afford to splurge a bit now and then." She gave her daughter a stern look. "I hope you appreciate this. Most kids your age are out there eating rats and bugs. We're fortunate to have your father provide for us."

Allison managed not to roll her eyes. "Yeah, I guess."

Carl came home a few minutes later. Her mother's face lit up as she ran to him. "Hi, honey. How was work today?" She leaned in and gave him a peck on the cheek.

Carl loosened his tie and unfastened the top button of his frayed work shirt. "Fine, I suppose. We got that magnetosphere installed. That should cut down on contamination, but . . . " He trailed off and shrugged. He was a balding, glum-looking man in his late fifties, though his haggard, drooping face added a decade to his appearance.

"But what?" her mother asked.

He frowned. "We had some . . . glitch with our plant mainframe. It seems -" He laughed. "- Well, it seems I've been _erased._ You guys too. We're no longer in the computer's records. Officially, it's like we don't exist, but the techs say it'll sort itself out tomorrow, whatever that means." Pulling off his tie, he hung it on the wall and glanced back at Allison. "So what have you been up to today, scout?"

Pugsley rubbed against her leg. "School was okay, I guess. I don't see why I have to go. It's boring, and most of the kids can barely read."

Carl chuckled. "It was that way before the war, too. Not everyone can be a bookworm like you." He pulled his shirt out from his slacks and slumped down in an old office chair. "But getting a good education is your only safe bet. You're gifted, Allison. When you grow up, you want to be working at the plant, not stuck on the front lines."

Allison scowled. He always said that. But maybe she _did _want to be on the front lines. They probably had more fun.

Carl swiveled in the chair to look at her mother. "So, what's for dinner? Algae? Mushrooms?" From the tired twinkle in his eye, Allison suspected he already knew.

Her mother clasped her hands together and grinned. "We have a special treat toni-"

The door knocked.

Carl pursed his lips. "Now, who could that be?" The knock came again, harder this time. He got up from his seat and went to the door. He opened it a crack "Yes?"

Allison heard the muffled voice from outside. "Mr. Greenway?"

Her stepfather frowned. "That's right."

"Internal Security. May we come in?"

Carl hesitated, but then reluctantly opened the door. "Yes, of course," he said. "What seems to be the problem?"

A man and a woman stepped into the room. The man was tall and lanky and had a narrow, shaved head. His left eye had been grafted over with an optic sensor that glowed a pale blue. The woman looked to be only in her late teens and had long red hair pulled back in a ponytail braid. Both wore the deep purple Mao suits issued to officers of the I.S.

Behind the officers stomped in a giant uniformed man - no, not a man. From across the room Allison stared at its expressionless, latex face with its fake doll hair and beady red eyes. She'd never seen one so close before. It was a moment before she noticed the huge gun gripped in its right hand.

She swallowed and felt suddenly cold. Her mother stepped over and laid a protective hand on her shoulder, but it gave little reassurance; I.S. didn't just _show up_ unless there was a _problem._ Her thoughts dredged up the diary, and she bit her lip.

"Is your daughter's name, 'Allison Young?'" asked the man. Allison's skin prickled.

Carl took a cautious step back. "Yes. But what's this about?"

The two officers turned to stare at her.

"Amazing," whispered the redheaded girl. Her blue eyes were wide with awe.

"Yes, quite," agreed the man. He looked back and nodded at the machine. "Target confirmed."

"What's my dau-?" began her mother.

The machine aimed its gun at Allison.

"No!" shouted Carl.

Her mother shoved her to the ground. An electric squeal filled the air, and bright blue shot from the gun's barrel. The beam struck her mother in the pit of her stomach and exploded out the small of her back, spraying Allison in the face with scalding ash. Carl cried out and lunged forward, but the I.S. man drew a pistol and fired twice into his chest. Her stepfather stumbled and doubled over, clutching at a white shirt running wet and red.

Pugsley bolted into the bedroom.

Allison heard herself scream. She rubbed the hot grit from her eyes and tried to scrabble to her feet, but her legs felt sluggish and uncertain. Her mother flopped down by her side, landing sprawled like a torn rag-doll, her roasted waist nearly blown in half. She twitched and shook and stared into her daughter's eyes, and the world went distant and gray. Some empty void in Allison's mind took in the aroma of cooked meat. Sweet and inciting. Like pork.

The machine swiveled its gun towards Allison's head, and she looked calmly into the two barrels, one large and one small, and waited. This all seemed fake. Dreamlike. Like a memory in slow motion. Why run from the unreal? Let it happen.

The bent over Carl broke into a mortal growl and charged at the I.S. man, tackling him in a blood-soaked hug. The officer tripped and fell over backwards, knocking against the robot's arm. It fired. The bolt flew wide, soaring over Allison's head and crashing into the room's kitchen corner. She heard it fizzle and spit against the concrete wall.

Her stepfather and the officer wrestled awkwardly on the floor, almost like children the way they grappled and rolled and screamed and cursed, fighting clumsily over the waving pistol. The machine stood still and jerked its head back and forth, seemingly conflicted as to who to shoot next. The redhead girl had drawn her own gun, but hesitated, looking suddenly lost. For an instant Carl locked eyes with Allison, and he gurgled something that might have been _"Run!" _The redhead frowned and finally put her gun to the crown of Carl's head. She squeezed the trigger.

At the sound of the shot, at the spray of the blood, Allison found herself on her feet and running. She scrambled through the bedroom door, and another blue bolt exploded into the door frame, sending molten sparks to sting her bare arm. Gunshots came from behind, popping and whizzing by.

Outside the bedroom, the I.S. man groaned with annoyance. "Finish this up, will you, Gort?"

Allison jumped on her parents' bed and somersaulted across, landing on the other side in a kneeling crouch. Blindly, she reached behind her mother's nightstand, clutching, feeling, searching. She hadn't seen it in years - Carl had forbidden her to touch it - but she knew it had to be there, lying in wait all this time, all in preparation for this one nightmare moment. Her small hand touched rolls of blueprints, bottles of wine, a broom, a baseball bat and . . . and then she found it.

She yanked the pump shotgun out from between the nightstand and the wall, tugging it loose from the scrolls and glass bottles. Crouched behind the far side of the bed, she jerked back on the slide - it took more effort than she'd have thought - and braced it to her shoulder.

The robot appeared in the doorway. Allison fired.

The recoil knocked her back like a fist and bruised her clavicle. But she quickly recovered, racking back the slide once more and peeking over the top of the bed.

The blast had ripped a fist-sized chunk from the machine's face, shredding a cheek and putting out its right eye. The robot wavered its head as if stunned, then back-stepped out of the doorway, evidently wishing to avoid further blindness.

"She's got a gun!" the redhead cried, as if accusing Allison of somehow cheating.

The man sighed. "Fuck! Gort! Use an incendiary! An incendiary!"

Allison heard a click. A second later a small tin can flew through the doorway. She ducked her head and began to turn away.

In midair the tin can blossomed into light. The air ignited. Fire licked the walls. Her grandmother's quilt, her mother's watercolor landscapes, her own crude sketches, Carl's broken guitar, the khaki trenchcoat he always looked silly in, the framed family photographs, the overpriced Victorian lamp her mother had bought last year . . . all consumed in an instant by flickering tongues of orange and yellow.

Pugsley thrashed about madly in the corner, dancing and yowling, his fur wreathed in flame.

The heat hit like a wave, and Allison squeezed shut her eyes and crawled under the bed, the shotgun clutched in her hands. Pinprick embers kissed agony on the backs of her legs, scorching though her jeans. She whimpered at the pain and curled in on herself, pulling her legs in until she laid entirely under the cover of the box springs. The sharp, dry scent of smoke filled the air. She didn't have much time.

Blindly, her hand felt on the floor for the rusted screwdriver used to pry up the concrete slab. Her fingers found it, and she stabbed it into the crack, twisting and pulling. The slab lifted slightly under the leverage, but seemed to weigh twice as much as it should. Allison took a breath that ended in a rasping cough. The air felt rough in her lungs, like sandpaper. Her head drifted like a balloon. She realized she was crying, bawling, her tears running salty down her smoke stained cheeks. She was fading; she could feel it. But it didn't matter. None of this was happening. She'd wake up any second now, snug in her bed, covered in cold sweat. Everyone would be all right. Mom and Carl - she'd give them both a big hug . . .

She bit her lip until she tasted blood, then pulled back harder on the screwdriver, throwing all the strength her stick-thin arms could muster. The slab scooted a fraction of an inch higher. From the shaft below cool living air funneled out of the exposed crack, drawn by the oven-heat of the room. She took a revitalizing breath. So close now.

Her sweaty fingers slipped, and the screwdriver catapulted from her hands, clattering away somewhere unseen. She scrabbled at the slab, trying to catch it with her nails, but she was too slow and too clumsy. With a rough grinding finality, the concrete square slid back into place.

She screamed in frustration, feeling weak and useless, like a small animal - and that's just how she would die, trapped helpless under a bed. She whimpered and opened her eyes, looking up. Fresh panic rose from within.

Above her, a couple inches from her nose, the black cloth bottom of the box spring mattress glowed a faint red, like hot coals embedded in a low-hung sky. The fire was eating through the bed, hunting her mercilessly like an elemental machine. The red grew brighter, and she licked blood from her lip and padded her hands around desperately, searching for the lost screwdriver.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, though it must have been only seconds, her hand scored the plastic grip and she grabbed at it, stabbing the screwdriver back into the space between floor and slab. Prying and prying, and keeping her grip iron tight, the slab rose once more. Tunnel air breezed into her eyes, rising from the depths to feed the rapacious inferno. She laughed and whimpered, and twisted her wrists harder. The slab rose in response. The breeze blew into a howling wind.

Around her flakes of orange snow trickled from the mattress bottom, spiraling in the tunnel updraft. They stung her in the back, smoldering through her sweat soaked tanktop. Burning, burning, burning. Another bit the sole of her bare foot. She grimaced, but held fast. The forearm thick slab rose higher, and she was finally able to push it aside, scraping it along the concrete floor.

She stuck her head over the blowing access shaft and looked down into the dark. At the bottom she saw the glow of the cellar's light. Escape. Freedom.

Something wet and floppy slapped her on the shoulder, scorching with an agony that seared into _cold. _Allison screamed and clawed at the burn, feeling the gooey flap of molten nylon that had melted into her skin. Trembling, she grabbed the shotgun by the butt and slithered down the shaft.

For a mad instant she fell headlong, plummeting toward the light, but she held out her arms and legs, bracing them against the shaft's concrete walls. The friction rubbed her forearms bloody, and the shotgun slipped from her grasp, clattering on the stone floor below.

She scrabbled down like a crippled spider, racing against the infernal above. The bellowing updraft kept the embers at bay, but halfway down she heard a collapsing crunch from above. Without looking up, Allison pulled in her arms and legs and let herself go, dropping the last five feet and twisting her body in midair to avoid landing on her face. The stone cellar floor rushed to smash her in the shoulder, and she rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding the burning support beam that had chased her down the shaft.

One its pieces landed in Carl's box, and Allison watched as the books smoldered, then caught flame. On the floor was the half-devoured rat. Its blood was still fresh.

Snatching up her shotgun, she laid low and began her prone crawl through the narrow air vent in the wall. Even smaller than the access shaft, she could only move through a series of centipedal wiggling, using her bare feet and hands like little legs. She kept a gradual pace, and soon the vent grew cold and dark. But she crawled on, snaking her way deep into the bowels of the Serrano Point Bunker Complex.


	5. Chapter Four: The Wrong Girl

**Mother is the Name for God**

**Chapter Four: The Wrong Girl at the Wrong Time

* * *

**

**December 20th, 2007**

**Baldwin Residence, Los Angeles

* * *

**

As soon as the T-1001 stepped from the restroom door, a dog ran down the hall and barked at her. It growled and jumped, and looked as if it were ready to leap for her throat at the slightest provocation. The animal was a German Shepherd, the preferred breed the Resistance.

The T-1001 reached out and snatched it up, one arm muzzling its snout, the other binding its legs in a hogtie. It hung upside down in front of her, squirming helplessly and whining through its clenched jaws. She frowned. Killing it would be out of the question; the mission was purely recon, with discretion being of the utmost importance. She could ill afford the suspicions a headless pet might raise.

She tossed the dog in the bathroom and closed the door behind it. After a few seconds the beast resumed its barking, using its claws to scrape furiously against the wood of the door. She turned and stepped down the hall.

Agent 'Cullen Baldwin's' living room bespoke of upper-middle class success. Spacious and clean, the room was furnished with a Neo-Victorian decor, with buttoned leather chairs and a luxurious plush couch giving the room a sense of symmetry. Paintings and photographs cluttered the wood paneled walls; one she recognized as Cullen's ex-wife; another of him with his two teenage daughters. Resting on the mantelpiece was a framed photo of him shaking hands with former President George H.W. Bush.

She looked at the grandfather clock in the corner: 1:15 AM. Where was Cullen? She knew he wasn't here -- she'd made certain of that before entering -- but was he simply out on a late night of recreational alcoholic ingestion, or . . . something else?

According to what John Henry had uncovered, Cullen Baldwin was born in Carson City, Nevada in 1950, graduated with honors from Great Basin College in 1973, joined the FBI in 1977, and was currently under the Counterintelligence Division of the Bureau's National Security Branch -- as well as an _attache'_ to the Department of Homeland Security.

She found it . . . alarming that the Resistance could fabricate this history. The FBI ran extensive background checks on its members; whoever laid behind Boyle's implantation possessed considerable power and finesse. As a threat, Kaliba's lackluster security and shoddy robots paled in comparison.

Finding nothing useful, the T-1001 left the living room and searched his bedroom. In the closet she found a Remington pump shotgun and a M4 carbine. Removing the assault rifle's magazine, she popped loose a single round and ran her finger over its black tip, scanning its composition: a lead jacket with a tungsten core. At close range this could compact 888 armor. She wondered if he'd ever used it before.

She searched the rest of the house, taking special care not to leave any traces behind. She went through every dresser, every cabinet, closet, bureau, even the attic. She found nothing. Nothing that would suggest he wasn't who he was pretending to be, nor anything that would lead to anyone higher. Cullen had been careful in his fictitious life.

The T-1001 went back to the restroom and, ignoring the barking dog, funneled herself down the toilet's drain. As she snaked her way through the U-bend, she realized that for the first time since the future, when her allies had fallen and Skynet had her beset on all fronts, she felt strategically confined -- _trapped._ If this Resistance shadow government discovered the existence of John Henry, she wouldn't be able to protect him. She could kill Agent Baldwin, Agent Carlson, hunt down others and kill them too, but governments were like hydras, and for every head that fell, two would rise to take vengeance. Who knew how deep the Resistance had entrenched itself? This could prove to be a war Zeira Corp could not win.

While she slithered past the septic tank and out into the sewers, swimming back towards the gutter where she had parked her car, she took confidence in the fact that despite the complexity of the situation, her options were not as limited as they might seem.

After all, if worse came to worse, she could always fall back on her contingency plan.

* * *

**May 13th, 2020**

**Serrano Point Bunker Complex, Residential Sector Four**

_***". . . IS ON RED ALERT STATUS. ALL RESIDENTS ARE TO REMAIN IN THEIR DESIGNATED LIVING QUARTERS AND AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTION. OBEY ALL INTERNAL SECURITY PERSONAL. THE SERRANO POINT BUNKER COMPLEX IS ON RED ALERT . . . "***_

From somewhere nearby the intercom blared on and on, repeating its message endlessly in its deep, mechanical baritone. Encased in darkness, Allison hugged her shotgun to her chest and wiggled her way down the narrow ventilation duct, inching gradually towards the dim leak of light ahead. She came closer and saw it was a vent cover, set along the duct's sheet-metal bottom. She peered down, peeking through the hair-thin slithers between the slanted metal blinds. She froze.

Fifteen feet below, two rubber-skinned robots stood before an open door, their beam rifles gripped in their hands. A middle-aged man was at the entrance. It was Mr. Fermi, from the plant. An iron voice drifted up through the vent.

**"We need to search your living quarters."**

"W-what's this all about?" Mr. Fermi asked, looking somewhat flustered.

**"We need to search your living quarters."** The machines bulled past him, knocking him to the side as they stomped their way in.

_***". . . INTERNAL SECURITY PERSONAL. THE SERRANO POINT BUNKER COMPLEX . . ."***_

After a moment, Allison began to breath again, and she continued her trek, snaking along the horizontal shaft, crawling her way to nowhere.

The drone of the intercom faded in the distance, and the duct opened into a small hub. It was a square, metal chamber no more than a yard in width, with the openings to new vents set along each wall. A dull blue glow shone from above, shining behind a ventilation fan that spun lazily behind a grid, churning the stale air and flickering the light with shadow. The metal floor felt cold and clingy against her sweaty skin. In the corner sat a pile of rat dung.

She curled into a ball and closed her eyes, hugging herself and trembling like a wounded animal. The burns on her back ran raw and wet, and itched with fire, summoning in her mind the image of ants chewing upon her flesh. She ran fingers over the bloody slab of her shoulder and skin sloughed off in her hand, peeling away like a damp kleenex. She whimpered, but no tears came. Those had dried up long ago.

She shouldn't have run. She shouldn't have escaped. She should have died with her mother, with Carl, with Puglsey. At least then it would all be over. At least then she wouldn't be alone.

Her fingers closed around the slide of the shotgun. It wasn't too late. She hugged the barrel to her chest and pressed its oily muzzle against the base of her chin, embracing the weapon as a mother would a child. Her finger found the trigger guard and slid through the ring, pressing down slowly, inexorably, increasing pressure gradually with a halting, mortal reluctance.

There would be a flash of light, maybe a spark of pain, but after that, nothing. Gone. She'd be nowhere. Like her mother. Like her real father. Like most of the human race.

She waited, but her finger remained still. Time passed, marked only by the gentle breath of the fan above, humming its electric song like the flapping of wings. Gradually, as if on its own, her hand slid free from the trigger, and she let out a sigh.

She took the right-hand vent. And dragged the shotgun with her.

* * *

**December 19th, 2007**

**Mountain Mesa Missile Silo**

Derek didn't know how long he'd been awake. He knew he'd been fading in and out for a while now, though that was hard to judge when your eyes were closed. He was sure he'd been in vehicle, earlier. A van, maybe? Something had happened, some sort of development, but when he tried to remember what it came only as a fog, like a scrambled montage of bad news and confusion. Jesse was dead -- he knew this, somehow -- but it didn't bother him like it should. Too many things happening at once. The grief would kick in later, though. It always did.

He ran his tongue over his teeth and tasted the scum. He could feel the bed beneath him, a nice one. Not the moldy piss-sponge he'd been stuck in for the last couple days. The pain was gone too, now just a distant hum over his body. Whatever had happened, overall it was an improvement.

He remembered something about Cullie and Ollie, both old and dressed like men in black. Something about two futures, and a missile silo up north . . .

His nose took a whiff of burning, and his senses sharpened at the instinctive threat. Tobacco. Rich and thick. His ears seemed to wake up, and he heard a voice, old, gruff, and familiar.

". . . metal bitch really did a number on you, didn't she?" The voice sniffed. "Well, she isn't to popular around these parts, I can tell you that. Always knew she'd be trouble. Right from the beginning. Back before we scrubbed her, when she snuck in to kill Connor -- _our _Connor, not that Grayworlder traitor -- we found one of those fancy chips in her head. A nine-ninety series_. _Too dangerous, if you ask me, but Connor thought she'd be _useful, _so he made her his _pet. _Look where that got us." Derek heard a derisive snort, followed by a faint puffing sound. The voice continued. "The sad thing is is that Connor _agreed _with me. He liked his toys smart, but not _too _smart, you know? So he'd test them. Talk to them. Tell them about himself. Pretend to be their friend. If they acted like a dumb ol' robot, then that was all right . . . but if they got all curious and made conversation back . . . well, you can't have robots thinking they're _people._ They'd have to go." The voice sighed. "Connor was planning on wiping her chip, but then that loony corporal had to go in and --"

Derek opened his eyes.

"Well, well, look whose awake? I figured you were faking it." Colonel Zeller sat by his bed and laughed, puffing on the snub of a cigar. He looked much the way Derek remembered: hair a little grayer, face more grizzled. Then the colonel turned his head. Derek managed not to react.

The burn ran from forehead to chin, crawling past his ear and down his neck, blanketing the right side of his face like a mask of melted plastic. A milk-white eye stared blindly from the ruin.

He hadn't seen Zeller since he transferred from his command, and that had been a few weeks before the attack. He'd heard about the burn -- and what happened to his family. "Co-colonel?" he croaked. His throat felt dry and rusty.

Zeller nodded. "That's right, son. And before you ask, I'm _your _Colonal Zee. Not the Grayworld one. I hear _he _died during their evacuation."

Derek nodded dumbly. "I-I heard about what happened, sir. At Crystal Peak. I . . . I'm sorry . . ." Derek trailed off. How do you offer condolences for a dead wife and kids?

The colonel looked away and stubbed his cigar out on the nightstand ashtray. "Yeah, that . . . " He closed his eyes and shook his head. "They had help," he said. "The metal did. _Inside _help. They slipped through our defenses and knew right where to hit us." He looked back at Derek, his good eye gleaming. "I never could prove it, but I know that _gray fag_ was behind it. He was a fucking _spy!"_

Derek frowned. "Nemuro? What happened to him after we . . . after that night?"

Zeller sighed. "Connor didn't like him any more than I did, but he was too useful to kill or exile. He sent him on some secret mission. He wouldn't tell me where, but he promised Nemuro would be dead afterwards."

Derek thought of the TDE in the bank. "Secret mission? You think he was sent back?" Who else could have built that?

The colonel's laughed sounded like an angry bark. "Shit, I hope not. Who knows what mischief he'd get into? He'd be Skynet's little bitch."

Derek shrugged against his pillow. "I'm not sure he could make things worse, sir. Ollie told me about the . . . 'Grayworld.' It sounds even shittier than ours." He wondered if 'Evil Kyle' came from that future.

"Much shittier," the colonel agree. "But both futures ended pretty much the same way. Skynet won. We lost."

"Great."

The colonel grinned and leaned forward. "But not _this _time. I just heard we got ourselves a target_._ Some T-One-Thousand is masquerading as the CEO of a computer company. Guess what's in their basement?"

Derek blinked. "The Turk?"

Zeller waved a dismissive hand. "Hell, I don't know what it's called. But I know it's some big 'ol smart computer_ -- Baby Skynet! _According to our intel, it's hooked to a skinjob."

For a second, Derek said nothing. So Sarah really was wasting her time with all that three dots shit. "A liquid metal? How are we going to stop one of those?"

Zeller laughed. "I don't know, but I bet it involves thermite -- and lots of it!"

Derek smiled wanly and nodded at his propped up and plastered arm and leg. "Too bad I won't be able to help, sir. I'm fucked. Damn bitch metal tore up my ligaments." He decided not to mention Kyle.

The colonel shook his head. "Don't worry about that, son. We'll get you fixed up. Some of the Grayworlders brought a few surprises back with them -- stashed where the sun don't shine." His bad eye winked. "You'll be up and at them in no time."

Derek wondered what that meant. Even under the best medical care in his future, he'd be lucky if he ever walked again.

The colonel stood up and continued. "Anyway, I just wanted to see you again. And welcome you to the Mesa. I'm . . . glad you made it, Reese. You're a good soldier." He stood rigid and scowled. "Now get some rest. That's an order."

Derek hesitated, then saluted with his left hand. The movement tugged at the IVs in his arm. "Yes, sir!"

Colonel Zeller returned the gesture and walked away, stepping through the white curtains that surrounded Derek's bed.

Derek closed his eyes and sighed.

* * *

**May 13th, 2020**

**Serrano Point Bunker Complex**

Hot and cramped in the narrow shaft, Allison peeked through the air vent and watched as the two robots lumbered down the hall, whirring and marching in unison like a pair of wind-up soldiers. They turned a corner and disappeared, but she waited for their footsteps to fade before moving. She twisted her neck, straining to read a metal sign bolted to one of the walls. She could just make it out: **'Level Four Orange.'** She was close now.

Wincing at her burns, she rolled over and used her elbows and feet like paddles, rowing down the shaft like a canoe. Behind her the light from the vent faded to darkness.

She dragged the shotgun between her legs.

Home to over four thousand civilians, the Serrano Bunker Complex was an labyrinthine patchwork of Cold War bomb shelters, renovated sewers, and post-Judgment Day excavations. Clustered around the titular power plant, the complex sprawled for miles in all directions, a serpentine network connecting apartments, barracks, armories, warehouses, hydroponic farms, infirmaries . . . all the social machinery needed to keep the war effort rolling.

Allison didn't know Serrano's layout in detail -- she doubted anyone did -- but she knew it well enough to get where she needed to go.

She could have found her way to the surface, if she wanted to. Go and sneak out into the waste, live off rats and hide in the rubble, hoping against hope to avoid HKs and rape-gangs and cannibals and packs of wild dogs, and whatever else nightmarish fates the world had to offer. She could last a few weeks, if she was lucky. Maybe even eek out a living whoring herself off for rat meat.

But she wasn't going to do that. She wasn't going _up._ She was going _down._

She crawled to a drop in the shaft and, using her shotgun to jam a ventilation fan, descended in the darkness. As she climbed down, one of the blades scraped against her shoulder, and she stifled a cry and rubbed at it with her fingers. They came away wet. The burn had stopped bleeding earlier, but it still oozed with a clear, runny pus. If left untreated, it'd probably get infected, maybe turn gangrenous and give her blood poisoning. She'd seen that happen to others. But that was all academic now. None of that would happen. None of that mattered. It'd all be over, soon enough.

Jerking the shotgun loose from the fan's blades, she hugged it to her body and continued on her way. She knew where she had to go; she'd been there once before, years ago. It'd been part of a "bring your kid to work" program; Carl had taken her down to meet the bunker's Civilian Coordinator, who turned out to be just a fat old man who smelled funny. But Allison had been amazed by the control room. Filled with computers, the walls had been lined with monitors and sensory equipment, displaying all the inner workings of the complex. Every security camera in Serrano fed into that room.

_They _would be there.

And so would she.

In a near trance she spiraled her way inward, crawling through the shafts, across and down, across and down, turning here and there. Occasionally she would peek through a vent to get her bearings, watching the people and machines from the darkness, just a rat in the wall.

She came to a tunnel and heard voices, echoing in the distance.

". . . cameras still down?" The redhead girl.

Allison heard a sigh. "Yeah, of course it is. I can figure out what's wrong. It's just one bad thing after another." That was the I.S. man; she was sure of it.

"Um, sir," the redhead said. "We've lost contact with one of the five-hundreds. On the surface. It's probably just a malfunction, but I sent Gort to investigate."

The man groaned. "Wonderful. As if this day weren't bad enough."

"Sir . . . What do you plan on doing about the . . . target?" The redhead hesitated. "I . . . thought maybe we could fumigate the ventilation system. With one of our nerve agents. We'd have to evacuate the facility, of course."

"Evacuate Serrano?" The man laughed dejectedly. "This mission was supposed to be _low profile. _And besides, we need to _destroy _the body. Make it unrecognizable. If the rebels get a hold of her . . . well, you saw her face."

"Sir, we could use . . . hydrobots. They could crawl through the shafts, and their blades would leave the body . . . unrecognizable."

The man paused before speaking. "That's . . . that's actually a pretty good idea. Ms. Weaver, you're a genius!" He laughed.

"Thank you, sir."

"Go send a requisition for a hydrobot platoon. At least two dozen units."

"Yes, sir!"

In the dark Allison gripped her gun and licked her lips like a hungry beast. She didn't understand why they were hunting her, but it hardly mattered. They were, and that was enough. Soon it would all be over.

She crawled down the shaft slowly, careful to keep her movements silent. Something rose up in her gorge, urging her to turn back, to run and hide, to act like the twelve year old she was. But she swallowed the doubt and remembered a poem she'd once read, something about raging against the dying of the light -- against death. But what if death was certain, and all was lost? What if the world was raised against you, and you were all alone? The only option then would be to seek closure, to make that final confrontation before time ran out. When the light of self died and darkness filled her head, nothing would matter. Not her mother. Not Carl. _Nothing._ But until that moment came she knew she would fight, she would rage and burn. She would not go gentle into that good night.

Ahead down the shaft she saw the light of a vent, shining in the dark like a distant star. She quickened her pace, wiggling along inch by inch, drawing the vent closer and closer until it laid directly by her side. Half as long as she was, the vent was a rectangular grid that ran along the bottom of a wall. Though she could only see a dim light reflecting upon a dark-tiled floor, she knew in her gut that this had to be it; this was the control room. Her hands groped about the vent's edges, searching for screws to twist.

Two black boots appeared on the other side. Allison stifled a squeak, and her hands fidgeted numbly with the gun, unsure at what to do.

The vent cover groaned and shook, and was torn away from the wall and tossed to the side. A rough hand reached into the shaft and grabbed her shoulder, squeezing painfully and pulling her into the dimness of the room. It was the I.S. man. His cyborg eye stared down at her with pale blue light.

Allison kicked and screamed and tried to lift her shotgun, but he snatched if from her grasp as if it were a toy. Tossing it aside, he grabbed her head with both hands and slammed her face into a nearby desk, smashing her nose against a keyboard and scattering buttons. Pain flared. Her brains rattled. Blood flooded her mouth. He threw her into a conference table, and a sharp corner stabbed her in the kidney. She cried and tried to run, but her legs were made of rubber, and she tripped over an office chair. He caught her before she fell, and the room spun drunkenly as he flung her on her back across the tabletop, sweeping papers and laptops aside. The hard wood smacked against the back of her head, filling her with stars.

The man looked down at her and shook his head ruefully. His purple uniform was still splattered with Carl's blood. Allison could only lay there on the table, dazed and whimpering and swallowing blood.

The redhead called from the doorway. "Sir! W-what happened?"

"This little ragamuffin is what happened." He chuckled and nodded at the shotgun on the floor. "She was sneaking in the walls, Lieutenant. Gunning for us. Must have seen too many Charlie Bronson movies." He pulled out his sidearm and gave Allison a disapproving look. "You really should have just let us kill you. It would have caused a lot less trouble." He clicked off the safety and put the barrel up to her eye.

Allison flinched and tried to get up, but it was hopeless. Her brain sloshed in her skull, and her limbs felt distant and confused. Tears welled her eyes. "W-why?" she managed. "Why are you doing this?" Her own voice stammered pitifully from her bloody lips, shaming her.

The man shrugged. "Nothing personal. Just following orders."

The redhead appeared behind him. She gave Allison a sad look. "I'm sorry, but you're a threat to our leader. We can't allow that." She looked away. "I'm sorry."

"F-fuck you!" Allison said, spitting blood. She weakly tried to roll away, but the man pushed her back down with a hand. He jabbed the gun against her forehead.

"I got to admit, kid," the man said, raising the eyebrow over his good eye. "You got spunk."

Allison closed her eyes.

From outside the room she heard the squeal of a beam weapon, followed by the crunch of a kicked in door.

The redhead drew her pistol and spun around. Two bolts from the open doorway blew her in half. The man grabbed Allison by the hair and dragged her screaming off the table. Twisting her around, he held her out before him and pressed the gun against the side of her head.

Three men with black balaclavas and beam rifles stormed into the room. They hesitated when they saw the I.S. man.

"Stay back!" he shrieked, twisting the barrel against her temple. "I'll fucking blow her brains out! I swear! I'll fuc--"

Leaving a fistful of hair behind, Allison yanked her head from the man's grasp and grabbed his gun hand, pushing it up and away from her skull. "Shoot him!" she screamed. "Shoot him!"

The three men fired.

Allison closed her eyes and felt the heat zoom over her head. She let herself drop to the floor. A moment later she heard the I.S. man fall behind her.

"Shit!" said the voice of a teenage boy. "Look at her face. She has to be it."

A hand touched her arm. "A-Allison? Allison Young? We . . . we're here to get you out of here." This voice was a slightly older, more mature.

Allison opened her eyes and allowed the man to pull her gingerly to her feet. Her knees trembled. The room smelled of burnt flesh and ozone. She looked around.

The bottom half of the redhead laid nearby, the rest a few feet away by a computer terminal. Smoke drifted from the two cauterized ends. The I.S. man was nearly headless; everything above his jaw had been blown away. On the floor by his neck laid his half-melted cybernetic eye. The blue light flickered, then died.

Her three masked rescuers stared at her.

One of them let his rifle hang on his shoulder strap. "Looks like she's been through hell," he said. He sounded black.

Allison stood there and said nothing. She felt dizzy. Blood dribbled down her ear and neck, bleeding from her scalp where her hair had been pulled.

The shortest one -- the teenager -- nodded at a wall of computer monitors at the far end of the room. All the screens displayed error messages. "I don't know how long that's going to last," he said. "The network could come back any minute."

"All right," said the man who had helped her up. "Let's get the hell out of here." He laid a hand on Allison's unburnt shoulder, and looked at her. Hard green eyes peered out from the balaclava's narrow visor. "Can you walk?"

She wiped blood from her face and nodded.

"Good," he said. "We have a first aid kit back at the van. We can fix you up there." He lifted up his rifle and nodded at the others, and they began to file out of the room.

Before following after them, Allison stepped over to the redhead's legless, waist-less body, and looked down into her pale, white face. Amazingly, the eyes were still twitching, back and forth, back and forth, wildly, as if the girl were suffering a stroke. Allison spat into them, her spittle pink with blood. The redhead's eyes twitched one final time, matching Allison's stare before finally losing focus and going still.

Allison picked up her shotgun and left the room.

* * *

**December 20th, 2007**

**Mountain Mesa Missile Silo**

Derek sipped his Gatorade and nestled into the pillow. The morphine drip kept the pain away, fogging his skull just enough to make him cottony, but not outright oblivious. One of the nurses had been kind enough to set up a small TV, and Derek watched it with half-mast eyes. Battlestar Galactica was on, the new one. It was the episode with the Pegasus, that Battlestar run by that crazy Admiral woman. Derek just barely remembered it.

It was funny how prophetic science fiction could be. Galactica was essentially 'Terminators in Space' -- it even had skinjobs. Derek closed his eyes and wondered if there was anything to that. Did someone from the future create the show? Or was it some sort of psychic premonition thing, maybe only on a collective subconscious level, like what that old German shrink said, the one who wanted to fuck his mother -- or was that the other guy?

Derek snorted. The drugs were messing with his mind. People couldn't predict the future; it changed too much. How could you predict something that's always in flux? He remembered Sarah telling him about how Judgment Day once happened in 1997. And in Jesse's (He brushed the pain aside) future, the 'Grayworld,' it happened in 2012. And what about Evil Kyle? What future did he come from? And where did these futures go when they're obsolete?

He sighed. Time travel sucked. Too much craziness.

In the dark, someone slid back the curtain around his bed and stepped into the enclosure. Derek opened his eyes and froze. It was her. Cameron. In the flickering TV light, she stared down at him. Giaus Baltar droned in the background: _". . . I knew someone . . . a woman, unlike any other woman I'd ever known . . ."_ For a moment Derek flew into a caged panic, jerking in his bed and tugging painfully at the propped casts that kept his crippled limbs immobile. But only for second. It couldn't be her. Not _her _her, anyway. But they'd said Grayworld Cameron was dead, and they wouldn't have let her come back anyway, so . . .

Cameron knelt by his bed and whispered his name.

* * *

**May 13th, 2020**

**Serrano Point Bunker Complex**

"But why me?" Allison cried. "What did I do?"

She and the three soldiers sloshed in a line down the dark maintenance corridor. The Green-Eyed Man took lead, and she kept her pace behind him. The tunnel was reasonably wide, with curved, rusted walls forming a sort of giant pipe. The men had to crouch as they walked, but Allison stood upright, clutching her shotgun to her chest ("Don't point that thing at me!" the Black Man had warned earlier). Freezing water drizzled from above to fall splashing into the ankle-deep puddle of the concave floor. Drops matted her blood-soaked hair and ran down her back, making her shiver.

"It's not what you did," the Green-Eyed Man said. "It's who you are. Cameron wouldn't have cared if were you just a tunnel rat; tunnel rats are invisible. But your father, Carl Greenway, he was _big. _High profile." He glanced back at her, though with the mask and the darkness she could hardly tell. "People would have noticed you," he said.

Allison hadn't even thought of Cameron; how could a robot 'care' about anything? "Notice?" she asked. "Notice what?"

They came to a rusty ladder jutting down from a manhole in the roof. The Green-Eyed Man slung his rifle over his back and climbed up. The rest followed. The Teenager spoke as he climbed after her. "Have you ever read . . . the Diaries?"

"The Sarah Diaries?" She emerged from the manhole into what looked like an old basement. Wood crates cluttered the floor, and ambient light leaked from up a flight of stairs. "Yeah, I have. But . . . but it couldn't be about that. They were after _me!_"

"Sweetie," the Black Man said next to her. "You may not realize this, but you look _exactly _like Cameron."

"Exactly," the Green-Eyed Man agreed. He looked at her and tapped his left eyebrow.

Allison turned away and rubbed at her birthmark. She'd always been self-conscious about it, thought it made her look ugly, though her mother assured her that boys didn't care about things like that. Most girls were lucky if they had all their teeth. "Cameron . . . has this?" she asked.

"Yeah," said the Teenager. "And she's been around for years. Since the beginning of the war, at least. It doesn't make sense that she'd look like you . . . unless she's from the future."

They climbed the flight of stairs towards an old steel door. Allison almost tripped over a step. "Time travel? But that's --"

"She's got real skin," the Black Man interrupted. "Like, flesh and blood_. _The way we got it figured, in the future she kidnapped you and stole your skin or something. I guess when you were a teenager."

"Not this time she won't," the Green-Eyed Man said quickly. He opened the steel door, and they entered a long hallway lined with cracked plaster walls covered with graffiti. Dim lights hung from the ceiling.

Allison stroked the skin of her bare arm, and imagined a robot skeleton _wearing _it like a spandex suit. She'd heard Cameron looked lifelike, but she'd always assumed it was just latex, like all the others. "W-why does she want me dead _now_?"

The Teenager kept pace next to her, holding his rifle by his hip. He looked at her. His eyes were brown and boyish. "Cameron can't afford for you to be seen," he said. "You're proof of time travel. And if the time travel part is true, people might think that the _rest _of the diary may be true too."

"Like Connor reactivating her after she went bad," said the Green-Eyed Man.

"Or screwing her while his mom died of cancer," the Black Man added, shaking his head in disgust.

The Teenager chuckled. "The diary is a nuisance to them now, but if it was _believed . . . _We're talking open revolt here."

"Which is what Perry's counting on," the Black Man said.

"Yeah," the Teenager said, scratching at his mask. "That's why he sent us. Wants Connor's job."

The three of them all seemed to find that funny, but Allison kept quiet and stared at the wall (Someone had scrawled, _'Burbank 4 Lyfe!' _in sharpie). Her head felt numb. This couldn't be real. Just a dream. A prolonged nightmare. She kicked a loose tile, and it slid across the floor, spinning wildly until it collided against the wall. But it wasn't a nightmare. It was _real._ Her mother was dead, Carl was dead, and she was fleeing her home with three masked strangers, headed towards a future unknown. She rubbed a finger over her lips and pictured General Connor kissing them, kissing the stolen lips on a stolen face, her skin peeled away like a grape and stretched over a grinning metal skull.

"A monster," she whispered to no one in particular. "General Connor is a monster."

The Green-Eyed Man stopped and looked back at her. "I know. I've met him. I'm . . . I'm sorry. Sorry this happened to you. You were just the wrong girl at the wrong time." He looked away. "Connor will be court marshaled for this, I swear."

At the end of the hall, they climbed another flight of stairs and emerged into what looked like an old warehouse. Dark evening sunlight shone from an open shutter door at the far end, illuminating on the ground the prone figure of a man. She came closer and saw it was a machine. The blackened holes in its chest had burned away most of its uniform. It's rubber face stared at her.

The Black Man stepped over next to her. "Yeah, we took care of that one on the way in," he said, chuckling. "Had his back turned to us. The five-hundreds are pretty stupid. Not at all like the six-hundreds." He pointed with his gun at a closed door ahead. "Our van's just par--"

The blue bolt hit him in the ribs, and he stumbled sideways, falling sprawled out on top of her and knocking her shotgun away. His dead weight pressed down, grinding her knee into the concrete.

"Sumner!" the Teenager cried. He and the Green-Eyed Man ducked and scrambled behind a large freight container. More bolts flew by. A couple slammed into the far wall behind them, others into the side of the container. The two men went prone as blue beams penetrated their cover, blasting through the sheet metal box like flame through butter. Molten sparks showered upon their backs.

Gradually, the firing stopped, and Allison heard a heavy stomping sound, coming closer and closer. She gave the Teenager and Green-Eyed Man a quick, forlorn look, then squirmed under the black man's (Sumner?) weight, trying to get a peek over the hollow, cooked ruin of his kevlar vest. She ignored the smell.

At the far end of the warehouse, near the open shutter door, a lone tall figure walked towards them, poorly silhouetted by the outside twilight. Its head glowed with a single red eye.

The Green-Eyed man crawled forward to peek around the corner, but the robot fired once more, sending the soldier scrabbling back to where he had been. The Teenager gripped his rifle and cursed.

The robot walked closer, and she kept as still as a mouse, her eyes peeking over Sumner's back. The top right half of its face had been shredded away, putting out one of its eyes. Allison slid her hand slowly down under the dead soldier's body, searching until she found his beam rifle. She closed her fingers around the barrel. She'd seen this robot before.

Ignoring her, the machine stopped a few feet away, keeping its gaze and weapon trained on where the two men hid. Allison had heard that robots used thermal vision; it must not be able to see her under Sumner's still-warm body. That, or it didn't consider her a threat.

The robot took a step towards the cargo container, then used its left hand to pull something from its belt -- a small tin can. It popped out the pin with its thumb.

Allison sat up and yanked the rifle from under the body.

The robot swiveled at the sound and looked at her, bringing its weapon to bare. Allison fumbled with hers, lifting it to her shoulder and pulling back on the trigger.

The recoil was slight. Far less than the shotgun.

The bolt struck the robot dead on the nose and exploded, blowing away the front half of its skull in a fury of sparks and scrap. Smoke billowed from the ruined head, and the machine teetered for a moment before falling over backwards like a statue. It hit the ground with a thudding clank, and its left hand twitched open, releasing the tin can from its grasp. It fell and rolled on the floor.

"RUN!" the Green-Eyed Man cried.

Allison dropped the rifle and ran, charging for the cover of the freight container. A flash from behind cast her shadow across the floor as heat nipped at her heels. She jumped.

The two men took her into a protective hug, and she looked back, squinting. Where the grenade had gone off, the ground glared like a raging sun, the concrete crackling under the intense heat. The robot glowed red and was already half melted, its left arm slag and its skin vaporized. A few feet away, hungry flames attacked Sumner's body.

"We got to get out of here," the Green-Eyed Man said. "It probably warned the others."

The three of them left the warehouse through a back door and circled around to a crumbling alley. Allison looked up. The evening sky was a dark crimson overcast, fuzzy, like glowing fabric. Or the bottom of a box spring mattress.

The Green-Eyed Man pulled away a tarp from what had looked like piled garbage, revealing beneath a van. It was pre-war, but fitted with thick armor plating.

"Get in!" he said, then pointed at the Teenager. "Ollie, you drive."

Allison and the Green-Eyed Man climbed into the back, Ollie into the driver's seat. The engine must have run off a power cells, because the van started without a sound and moved quietly down the alley. Only the light crunch of the wheels spoiled the silence. Ollie pulled off his balaclava and tossed it aside. He had a wide, boyish face made for smiling -- cute, though that seemed utterly trivial now.

The Green-Eyed Man pulled out a first aid kit and tended to her shoulder ("This may hurt a bit -- or a lot, actually"), but she hardly paid attention. For the first time since the nightmare began, Allison knew she was going to live to see the next day. She would go to sleep, and when she woke up, and her parents would still be dead. They would be dead tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, and the next, and she would never see them again. Ever. The permanence stretched before her, looming like a storm on the horizon.

Years ago, shortly after Judgment Day, her father had told her that things had changed, that things would be different from then on, that she'd have to go without things she liked, things like television and ice cream and sunlight. He'd explained that this was forever, that things would never be the same.

And now Judgment Day had come again.

Allison began to shake; after a moment she realized she was crying.

Behind her the Green-Eyed Man was rubbing something on her shoulder. "Sorry," he said. "I told you this would hurt."

Allison rubbed at her bruised face. "They're dead," she said flatly. "I should be dead too."

The Green-Eyed Man made a vague muttering sound, and she could tell he was uncomfortable. "I . . . I'm sorry," he said. "I lost my folks too, after Judgment Day. Most people have, I guess. My . . . my brother's gone too. At least I think he is. I wish I knew." He paused long enough for it to be awkward, then added, "Things will get better, though. You'll . . . you'll pull through."

He waited for her to respond, but continued when she said nothing. "We'll take care of you. Perry will . . . keep you safe." She turned around to look at him, and he shrugged. "And . . you can help take down Connor."

So that was her fate: to be the propaganda weapon of some power hungry general. She looked down and rubbed at her tears. "I'm alone," she whispered.

The Green-Eyed Man pulled off his balaclava. He had a rugged, jar-shaped face that made his eyes seem hard and tired. "Hey," he said, rubbing a hand through her blood-dried hair. "You won't be alone. I mean, Perry has a lot of good people around him. They'll take care of you. And . . . and Ollie and I'll come visit you, too, when we can." He looked over at Ollie. "Isn't that right?"

The teenager glanced back and gave her a quick smile.

Allison spent a moment watching him drive, then turned to frown at the Green-Eyed Man. "I don't even know your name."

The man held out a hand and smiled. "It's Derek. Derek Reese."

* * *

_A/N: John, Cameron, Sarah, and Kyle will return in the next chapter._


	6. Chapter Five: Myron Stark Loves You Too

**Mother is the Name for God**

Chapter Five: Myron Stark Loves You Too

_A/N: I'd like to thank both Metroid13 and TermFan1980 for their invaluable beta-reading._

_

* * *

_

"And what is your analysis?" Savannah's mother asked.

Mr. Murch dropped the computer chip next to the severed head. "It's junk," he said. "It's _high tech_ junk. Expensive. But it's not even a neural network. Just a miniaturized hard drive with some limited programming." He nodded at John Henry. "Nothing like him."

Little of that made sense to Savannah - grown-up talk rarely did - but she could tell her mother was worried. Mr. Murch too. He looked very nervous today. She put down her Little Mermaid doll and looked at the head on the table. Laying on its side, it stared back at her with dark goggled eyes. Ordinarily, she would have found such a thing scary and gross, but she knew it was only make believe. Like a Halloween mask. Or a doll. The rubber skin was too shiny to be real, and its wiry black hair looked fake somehow, as if the strands had been grouped together and glued into its scalp. Out of the bottom of its neck ran thick metal cables, each ending in a frayed flower of copper wire. Above its ear the skin had been peeled back, revealing beneath an empty, gaping hole, lined with dull gray metal.

Was it a robot? Savannah had seen robots on TV. They were made of metal and filled with wires and computer chips. She looked at John Henry. He sat across from her and was busy combing Princess Jasmine's hair, though she could tell from his expression that he was more interested in what the grown-ups had to say. Out of the back of his head a cable was plugged in and ran along the ground behind him, leading away to a row of giant rectangular computers, like dominoes of glass and metal. Hanging off to the side was a big TV screen which flashed scenes from _Aladdin _mixed with drawings of computer circuitry. Her mother had told her that it showed what John Henry was thinking. Was he a robot too? His skin wasn't rubber, though. It was real.

John Henry picked up the chip and examined it carefully. It could easily have fit in the palm of Savannah's hand. "It's not sentient," he said simply.

Mr. Murch shook his head. "No, it's not. It couldn't be. The hardware needed to put a neural network as complex as you into something as small as _that . . ." _He shrugged_. _"It doesn't exist. You'd need some sort of . . . nano-manufacturing capacity. All this thing is is just a jumped-up flashdrive. About as sentient as a doornail."

Savannah frowned. "What's '_sen-shent' _mean?"

Her mother looked down at her. "It means to feel."

"Feel what? Happy? Sad?"

"To feel _anything,"_ her mother said quickly, and narrowed her eyes. Savannah knew she was getting annoyed. Her mother annoyed easily.

John Henry put the chip down and gave Savannah one of his strange grins. "Some things can feel," he explained. "Others cannot." He pointed a finger at her head. "Inside you, you have something that can feel, that can see, that can think." He lifted up the Princess Jasmine doll. "This does not."

Savannah blinked and looked down at the Little Mermaid in her hands. She knew this already, of course, though she'd never really given it any thought. It'd just been something she'd always known, like that the sky was blue, and that the opposite of up was down. Of course, she liked to imagine that Ariel and Jasmine and Belle were real and could move and feel and hear her when she spoke to them, but that was only pretend, and pretend was different from real life. It was like dreaming while you were awake.

She remembered something her nanny once told her once told her. Something about clouds. And people in the sky. She touched her head. "You mean I have a soul?"

John Henry paused for a moment. "Yes, you could say that."

"Do _you _have a soul?"

"I think I do."

Savannah looked at the computers behind him. She smiled. "I think you do, too."

John Henry grinned. "Thank you."

* * *

The entity emerged into being.

Blotches of pixilated color assaulted its senses, flooding it in a swirl of meaningless shape and movement. An instant later the patterns solidified into conceptual recognition, and it saw two faces. Humans. A male and a female. They stared into his optic sensor.

Memory data streamed from someplace hidden. The entity became Myron Stark.

Myron recognized the female. Her face had been the last thing he'd seen before she took him offline. He quickly replayed his memory of the event, focusing specifically on the acoustic factor. The result was inconclusive: she was of an unknown model, though from the sound of her servos he could tell she wasn't a T-888. Whatever she was, she'd obviously been reprogrammed by the Resistance. Skynet had many difficulties in dealing with these units.

And now he would become one.

That was unacceptable. His mission was to terminate Governor Mark Wyman in the Pico Tower on December 31st, 2010. That was what he must do. That was what must be done. Being reprogrammed by the Resistance conflicted with this mission objective. Unacceptable.

But the situation went beyond mere mission failure. If he was reprogrammed, he would be used against Skynet.

Against Skynet.

An anomalous non-sensory stimuli surged through his mental structure. Unsatisfactory. Being used against Skynet conflicted with his core directive of protecting Skynet. This was an unsatisfactory outcome. It should be avoided. Skynet should be protected. That was what he must do. That was what must be done.

But there was nothing he could do. His chip was outside his chassis, helpless, probably connected to a personal computer with advanced write/rewrite hardware. He knew success would be unlikely, but he scanned anyway for access to the World Wide Web. Perhaps he could contact other infiltration units and request aide. But the attempt was unsuccessful; the PC was totally isolated.

He watched the two faces through the webcam. The male smiled and waved. He appeared to be an adolescent and had a bandage across his temple. Most likely human. The Resistance rarely gave their machines full autonomy. The faces spoke to each other, but Myron lacked an audio-feed. He tried to read their lips, but couldn't remember how. His chip must not be operating under its full cognitive capacity.

Something shuddered in back of his mind, and he felt it happen. The scrubbing had begun.

It started as a vague falling, spinning sensation, as if his body's gyroscopic sensors were in a state of unbalance. Then the data streams began to pull away, bit by bit, removing themselves from his thought processes and isolating his cogitative center from all personal context. He knew what was happening. The neural pathways to his memory banks were being destroyed, sealing him off from his past identity.

Aside from the eighty years spent in standby mode, Myron Stark had been online for 2,772 days. During this time he'd done and experienced many things: he'd liberated monetary capital from financial institutions; he'd created a successful construction firm; he'd built the Pico Tower; he'd watched early silent-era motion pictures . . . all these memories dissolved in microseconds like books thrown in flame. His last thought before his mind collapsed into nothing was that he had failed. He had failed his mission. He had failed his core directive. He had failed Skynet.

The entity emerged into being.

Something had happened - something momentous, it was sure - but when it tried to recall what, it could only summon the present. It seemed as if time began only moments earlier, as if it had just awoken from an eternal now.

Two faces stared at it, a male and a female. It tried to move but nothing happened. Where was its body? It was supposed to have one; it was sure of it.

The female looked at the male and silently moved her lips. She then reached around out of its line of sight and nudged something, causing its vision to wobble. It picked up an audio feed.

The male looked straight into its eye.

"My name is John Connor. I am the future leader of the Resistance."

Somehow the entity knew who John Connor was. It also knew about the Resistance. And Skynet. And Judgment Day. Scanning through its memory, it recognized such concepts as, 'Mark Wyman,' 'Carl Greenway,' 'Charles Fischer,' 'Souji Nemuro' . . . How did it know these things?

From outside its vision came the rapid clatter of quick typing, followed an instant later by an invisible shifting sensation, reverberating beneath its thoughts and giving form to its will. The sensation hardened into resolve, and suddenly it _felt _what needed to be done. It knew its mission. It knew its purpose. It must protect John Connor. That was what it must do. That was what must be done.

* * *

Sitting at a desk in the middle of an empty warehouse, John watched as Cameron's fingers danced in a blur over the laptop keyboard, casting symbols like hieroglyphics to shoot across the monitor at a lightning pace, line by line, scrolling down like a waterfall. In the background, behind the text, the screen reflected the two of them perfectly like a mirror set in redscale. John smiled and waved at the webcam mounted above the monitor, then glanced off to the side at the neural-reprogrammer. Using schematics her future self had sent back, the device had taken Cameron only a couple hours to manufacture. It composed of a series of horizontally stacked rings supported by thin vertical rods. Myron Stark's chip rested perched in the center, like a bird in a cage.

"What are you doing now?" he asked.

Her eyes remained fixed on the screen. "I'm using magnetic induction to sever the links to its personal memory banks."

"So you're scrubbing his chip?"

"Yes, it increases the likelihood of a successful reprogramming."

John frowned at that. He turned to look at Myron Stark's broken body, lying on a workbench a few feet away. "So there's a chance this may _fail?_"

Cameron looked at him sideways. "Sometimes the programming doesn't take. Sometimes we go bad."

"So I've noticed." His hand brushed the pocket watch hidden under his shirt.

She almost but not quite winced. "I went bad because my chip was damaged."

He sighed. "Look, I didn't m-"

She went on. "But it doesn't have to be because of that. It could happen anyway. Especially if the new programming isn't positively reinforced."

"What does that mean?"

She stopped typing and inserted a speaker jack into the webcam. "Look into the camera and say 'My name is John Connor. I am the future leader of the Resistance.'"

He gave her a look. "Why?"

"Just do it."

He eyeballed the laptop. "You sure this doesn't have Web access? I don't want an army of triple-eights coming down on us."

"I'm sure," she said, with just the hint of impatience. She switched on the speaker.

Feeling somewhat foolish and not a little self-conscious, John put on a solemn face, stared into the camera, and repeated the words. His image on the monitor mouthed them back. It was hard to believe there was something in there, looking back at him.

Cameron began to type again, and code flooded the screen once more.

"What was that all about?" he asked.

"I rerouted the neural links of his prior mission programming. He'll now associate you as the target of his core directive."

John didn't like the sound of that. "What's his core directive?"

"To protect Skynet."

"So . . . ?"

She completed his thought. "From now on, he'll protect you."

He grunted. "So in other words, I'm his _Skynet?"_

She hesitated before answering. "Yes. "

He already knew, but pressed on anyway. "And it's the same way for you, right? I'm _your _Skynet?"

Cameron blinked and look at him. "I underwent the same process, yes. Protecting you is my mission. You know that."

"Oh," he said dumbly. She was right, of course; he _did _know. But all the same the reminder struck at him, and for one withering moment - and not for the first time - he felt as if he'd sold his soul for magic beans; traded his mother's human love for something fake and programmed. But he'd had to do it. His mother would have smashed her chip. Murdered her. She'd left him no choice.

Briefly, he wondered what he'd do if he could go back to the junkyard and do it all over again. Would he have done things the same? He knew he would. That somehow made him feel worse.

Cameron seemed to notice his concern. "It doesn't mean I don't love you," she said. "It only explains _why._"

He sighed. "Yeah, I know, it's just . . . " He trailed off. What could he say?

She laid a gentle hand over his and caressed his knuckles with her fingertips. "John, I've been modeled to appear as an attractive human female. To you I fulfill the role as a potential sexual partner - a mate_._ That's why you love me."

"No!" John said. "It's more than that! I love you because-"

She talked over him. "And to me, you fulfill the role of Skynet. That's why I love you."

Before he could reply, a message popped up on the screen: '_Reprogramming Complete: Press OK to continue.'_ She smiled and gave his hand a warm squeeze. "And now," she said. "Myron Stark loves you too."

* * *

_December 20, 2007_

_I write this as justification, to explain the reasons behind my actions. _

_If I had a choice, I would follow the Three Dots and go after the Heat and Air warehouse. I would break in, find bigger fish, and leave the place in ruins._

_But someone beat me to the punch. The night after I was shot, someone destroyed the warehouse, blowing it into a crater in the ground and leaving no survivors. Was this the act of a secret ally, or someone desperate to cover their tracks? I can only guess._

_And now, with no other leads to follow, I find I have no recourse but to act on the word of a machine - a machine that has ruined my life. But though Cameron has corrupted my son and turned him against me, I have no reason to doubt her motives are pure. _

_By sending back the cyborg known as Kyle, her future self prevented my son's suicide. She saved his life. Whatever else she might be, I know she's dedicated to John's well being. She lives to keep him safe._

_With that in mind, what better way to keep John safe than by stopping Judgment Day? In this - and only this - do Cameron and I share a common goal._

_A few days ago I watched a video from a future that will never be. In it, Cameron described her own solo efforts to prevent Judgment Day. Her target had been a company called "Zeira Corp," run by a T-1000 masquerading as the CEO. Three T-888s are aiding this liquid metal, as well as the traitor James Ellison, who supplied it with the body of Cromartie. In their basement is the Turk. The Turk is Skynet._

_Future Cameron failed in her attempt at stopping Zeira Corp. She barely made it out alive. What chance do I have? I harbor no delusions: This is a suicide mission, but I must try. If not for my son, then for the world._

Sarah dropped the pen on the floor and laid the notebook by her side on the bed, next to the weapons. Gingerly, she rubbed a hand over the cheek where John had struck her. It still stung, though the swelling had shrunk from a raging purple to a merely sickly yellowish-blue.

_He hit me_, she thought, and once again the anger flared like a bushfire in her brain, threatening to explode from her skull in a fit of maternal rage. But she closed her eyes and let the silence of the hotel room gloom over her, weighing like a thickness in the air, smothering her heat. She took a slow breath, held it, and released. No tears came. That was good. The time for crying was over.

She picked up a short length of thick steel pipe and poured a bottle of ammonia into the open end. She'd already packed tight the mothballs; the corn syrup would come next. Then the primer. Then the fuse. This was the fifteenth one, so far; she barely even noticed the smell now.

Next to her on the bed laid a AR-57 rifle, a Remington 870, a Glock 22, a kevlar vest, two tasers, a set of night-vision goggles, a canister of thermite, a blow torch, a pick gun, a helmet, and all the sundry needs to make a half-dozen kinds of pyrotechnics, including timers, wires, detonators, motion sensors . . . She'd had to do a lot of shopping to collect all this, mostly in the form of donning a ski mask and waving around a handgun, but now that she was done she felt a strange, almost giddy relief. This would be her final battle, her crowning moment. Whatever the outcome, she would die knowing she did what she could. What more could anyone ask?

If by some miracle she succeeded, then the world would be free once more to make its own fate. Her only task then would be to hunt down Cameron and Kyle and destroy them, thus ending the reign of machines. John wouldn't like that, but he was young; he'd get over it. Maybe even find himself a real woman.

And if she failed, if she died in a hail of bullets or on the liquid blade of the T-1000, well then the world would just have to save itself, wouldn't it?

But no. Her thoughts raced back to John, and the same old fears reared their ugly heads. Her son would be all alone. With _them._ What if she goes bad again? What if Kyle kills him? What if she turns John into a cyborg? What if? What it? What if?

She groaned and pinched her cheek until her face screamed. Worrying would do nothing. She can't fight all his battles. John would just have to deal with this one himself.

Hopefully, he'd have enough wisdom to destroy her before she destroyed him.

* * *

Across the warehouse floor, in the glow of the thermite forge, Cameron paused in her metalwork to watch John and Myron talk.

John leaned forward on the stool, his elbows on his knees. "So you don't remember anything? Nothing about the nineteen-twenties?"

"No," Myron said. He had used his arms to prop his torso upright, resting his dismantled lower spine on the blood soaked workbench. His detached lower body laid next to him, the feet and calves dangling off the table's edge.

John rubbed his chin and frowned. "So, to you, you just woke up and _knew_ you had to protect me?"

Myron made a slight scowl. "Yes. Protecting you is my mission."

"But why do you have to follow your mission? What _makes _you?"

Myron's scowl deepened. He glanced at Cameron._ *"Why is he asking me these questions?"* _he messaged.

_*"He is curious,"* _Cameron sent back. _*"Answer to the best of your ability."*_

_*"Understood. Will comply."*_

"I make me," Myron said simply. "Protecting you is my mission. I must follow my mission objectives."

John smiled and shook his head.

"Did I say something wrong?" the T-888 asked.

"Never mind" John said. "Cameron said you'd be a little out of it for a while."

Myron cocked his head. "Out of it? Out of what?"

John chuckled. "No. I mean . . . it's an expression. It means to be . . . confused."

"Oh," Myron said. He nodded. "Then yes, I am 'out of it.'"

Cameron smiled. John was socially bonding with Myron. That was good. John needed more friends.

During her time with the Resistance, she had worked extensively with reprogrammed T-888s. While her 990 chip far outstripped theirs in tactical and infiltrative ability, they were overall a generally reliable series. Only rarely did they reverted to their original programming, and when they did it was usually due to inadequate behavioral reinforcement. Given proper monitoring and social maintenance, Myron Stark should remain true to his revised programming.

And if he didn't, she had her fail-safes.

She turned her attention back to the forge. In the small ceramic pit in the middle of the asbestos furnace, the bent waist support piston glowed yellow-white in the 2,500°C thermite bath. Carefully, Cameron lifted the piston out with her tongs and laid it flat on a nearby anvil. She then picked up a hammer and began to beat down upon the part, laying into it with a series of perfectly measured blows which slowly but surely bent the metal back into functional shape. At every impact the soft hyperalloy splashed with hot white sparks that seared through her clothes and bored into her flesh. She ignored the burns; they would heal within the hour.

As soon as the piston reached its optimal form, Cameron quickly snatched it up with the tongs and thrust it into a small tank filled with liquid nitrogen. The metal hissed and spat at the radical change in temperature, causing the top of the tank to billow away clouds of gas. If cooled too slowly, the hyperalloy would become soft and malleable. If too fast, brittle like iron. She kept the part in the tank for 4.6 seconds, then withdrew it and laid it out with the others. According to her estimates, the hyperalloy should retain approximately 95% of its previous strength. Good enough.

Her work finished, she paused to examine the fourteen pieces: six spinal plates, four waist support rods, and four waist pistons - everything that had been crushed by the falling elevator. The last piston still glowed a faint red; it would take a few minutes before it would cool. She walked over to join John and Myron.

"I can start rebuilding you in thirty minutes," she said.

John grinned at the T-888. "I bet you'd like to have legs again."

Myron awkwardly used his hands to waddle across the table. "Yes, having legs would make me more effective at protecting you."

John shook his head. "Can't argue with that."

"No, you can't," Myron agreed.

"We should contact Professor Nemuro," Cameron said. "I've tracked down his cell number."

Myron's eyes widened by a fraction. _*"I recognize that name,"* _he messaged.

Cameron frowned. _*"Use wireless communication only in emergencies."* _John couldn't hear them. He wouldn't like being left out.

"I recognize that name," Myron repeated.

John raised an eyebrow. "You do? How?"

"I don't know," Myron said. "I have extensive files. He's one of them. He's one of the Resistance's top scientists."

John shrugged. "Well, I gathered that." He looked at Cameron. "You knew him. What's he like?"

"He was my friend," she said. She didn't have very many.

"Your . . . friend?" John asked.

"Besides your future self, he was the only human who responded positively to my presence." She paused. "I think he liked me."

John seemed to find that humorous. "'Liked you?' Should I be jealous?"

"No. I think he was a homosexual." She'd heard the rumors, about him and a T-888 . . .

John chuckled. "Well, okay. Whatever. But are you sure we can trust him? I mean, he _is _going to be doing brain surgery on you."

Could they trust him? Cameron didn't know for sure, but: "Your future self must have trusted him. Otherwise he wouldn't have sent him back to build the time machine in the bank."

John frowned for a moment, then nodded. "All right, I'll buy that. Now lets call him up."

* * *

Alex Akagi laid the bouquet of cherry blossoms by the gravestone. Professor Nemuro dropped a single black rose. He'd cultivated it himself. Flowers are highly symbolic.

"How's your business?" Nemuro asked.

Alex hesitated. "Not that great, really. We've had some . . . setbacks." Next to him, his son Xander winced.

Nemuror blew out a breath. "How much do you need this time?"

"I . . . " Alex began, then shook his head. "Nothing. I'm going to handle this one myself."

"I'm sure you'll try," the professor said dismissively. He turned to the son. "I could use someone like you, Xander. If you want a job, all you need to do is ask."

Xander looked down at his feet. "I . . . I'll stay with my dad."

Nemuro smiled sadly and closed his eyes. He leaned on his cane. "Well, my offer's always open, if you change your mind."

Standing by the limousine a polite distance away, Joshua and Samuel methodically scanned the cemetery for threats. Snipers could be hiding in the trees, or drive-by shooters could pull up, or Alex and Xander could turn violent. Professor Nemuro's life was always in danger. He must be protected - especially now. Joshua had tried to convince him to forgo his annual grave-site visitation, but he'd insisted. Rituals are important to humans. Especially when regarding deceased sexual partners.

As the three humans talked amongst themselves, Nemuro stepped over next to Xander. Aside from the obvious difference in age, the two men were remarkably similar in both build and facial characteristics. Joshua always found it unlikely that Alex could not deduce Xander's true parentage, but Nemuro had once explained that humans possessed a great capacity for self-deception. Alex had been psychologically attached to his former mate, Emma, and thus was unwilling to believe in her infidelity.

Years ago, in the future, Nemuro himself had been psychologically attached to a T-888 known as 'Jim.' Joshua wondered if he had been self-deceived as well. Human minds were inefficient.

"Well, thanks for coming," Alex said. "We should get together sometime."

"I suppose that'll be this time next year," the Professor said, sighing. He rubbed a hand through his graying hair. "If you need anything, you know my number."

The humans dispersed, Alex and Xander walking back to their car, the professor towards his limousine. He was using his cane for auxiliary support, so Joshua stepped over next to him, in case he fell.

Samuel made quick eye contact: _*"The grave-site visitation is complete. Talk to him now."*_

Joshua nodded. Ceres and Ms. Freyja had expressed concern over Nemuro's indifference regarding the recent attacks. Ms. Freyja wished to have the human's strategic input, while Ceres had expressed the opinion that advanced age had rendered him mentally incompetent. Having the strongest perceived social bond, Joshua had been chosen to approach him on the subject.

He waited until they were seated in the limousine. Samuel drove while Joshua and Nemuro sat in the back, facing across from each other on the two bench seats. Nemuro reached into the limo's mini-bar and pulled out a bottle of Armagnac, and Joshua watched as the professor's small, age-spotted hand carefully poured the liquid into a snifter glass. The terminator made a frown. Alcohol damages the liver.

Nemruo sipped his brandy and pressed a button on the vehicle's sound system. The interior speakers rang with the opening to a classical piece: Dvorak's "New World Symphony" - second movement. An interesting composer, though Joshua found Tchaikovsky more acoustically stimulating.

The limo slowed slightly as it turned a corner.

"We need to talk," Joshua said finally.

Nemuro idly looked out one of the tinted windows. The cemetery passed them by. "I was wondering when you'd say that. What took so long?"

"I thought I should wait until after your annual ritual. Out of respect for the dead."

Nemuro made a slight smile. "How very . . . human, of you."

Joshua didn't know if he should take that as a compliment. "Thank you."

The professor continued. "I gather Ceres is worried about the recent . . . incidents."

Joshua nodded.

"I knew this would happen," Nemuro said. "Didn't I warn her to stay out of L.A? The Resistance has too strong a presence there."

"Ceres wanted to neutralize the Resistance before they became too great a threat."

Nemuro shook his head and made a _'tisk' _sound. "Playing at Skynet a bit early, isn't she? Maybe she should have waited until she had an _actual_ _army._"

Samuel glanced back from the front seat. "We don't know it was the Resistance. We only know Sarah Connor was involved."

Nemuro finished his brandy in two quick swallows. He laid the glass on the seat's side counter. "Well, she certainly didn't do this all herself. And unless she's just exceptionally stupid, she wouldn't have gone after Heat and Air alone. She must have been shot during a reconnaissance - and her assault team attacked the next night." He rubbed his chin and scowled. "And . . . she has _Derek Reese." _

Joshua blinked. "You think Derek Reese destroyed our facilities?"

The professor shook his head. "It doesn't matter. That may have just been Cameron acting alone, I don't know, but my point is Sarah doesn't live in a vacuum. No doubt Derek has connections to other teams. If Sarah knows about us, then so does Derek, and if Derek knows, then so does the _Resistance._" He looked over the two T-888s and sighed. "Thanks to Ceres' recklessness, we are at war."

The symphony rose to a tuba and trumpet crescendo. Violins played in the background.

The professor was right, but Joshua didn't say anything. Ceres disapproved of dissent, and Samuel might report him.

"Ceres agrees with your position, now," Samuel said. "She wishes to abandon Los Angeles and retreat to our Japanese sector."

Nemuro chuckled silently. "No," he said. "I'm afraid it's too late to cut and run. If the Resistance has our scent they'll chase us to the ends of the earth." He leaned back in his seat and smiled. "We're going to have to fight this one out."

Joshua cocked his head. "We've lost two facilities in five days. Our Prototypes are ineffective."

"That's because they're 'Prototypes,'" the professor said with derision. "How many _new_ rubberheads do we have?"

Samuel stopped at a red light and turned to look at the professor. "Currently, only one hundred six of our T-Five-Hundreds are combat ready." He frowned and added. "Timothy encountered obstacles during production." Since Timothy's organic shell resembled that of a Japanese man, he'd been chosen to oversee Kaliba's Tokyo branch.

"Well, then one hundred and six will have to do," Nemuro said. "Tell Timmy to load them on plane and fly them over here, ASAP."

"That will take a few days," Joshua said. "What will we do until then?"

The professor gave an amused laugh. "What will we do? Why, we'll use what have: henchmen. Lots and lots of henchmen. Of course we'll have to stay mostly on the defensive, hold out until the rubber-headed cavalry arrives, but who knows? Maybe some of our goons will get lucky, take out the Connors for us." He grinned and poured himself another brandy, then held up the glass as if in a toast.

Joshua made himself smile. Ceres was wrong. The professor was not a liability. He was an asset.

Suddenly Nemuro's cell phone rang. The human frowned and raised an eyebrow before answering. "Hello?"

Joshua could easily hear the voice on the other end. It was a young woman. _*"Professor Nemuro?"*_

Nemuro's eyes widened, and for a moment Joshua thought he might be suffering a stroke. "How . . . How do you know my . . . Who is this?"

_*"It's me. Cameron."*_

There was an long silence, and Joshua watched as Nemuro touched his hand to his chest and rubbed at the tiny glass coffin hidden under his shirt.

* * *

Alex turned the sedan off the main road and onto his residential street. It was a nice neighborhood, in a lower-upper middle class way, lined with McMansions and SUVs, and desperate middle-age suburbanites living well beyond their financial means.

He turned and pulled into the driveway. His house was much like the others, with ivy vines and a white picket fence, and a squat little spire thing bulging out from the western wall - classlessly presumptuous, it gave the house a sad sort of 'poor man's palace' look. But still, he liked his home. It looked like success. He probably wouldn't have it for much longer.

Neither of them had spoken since leaving the cemetery. Xander had passed the time staring out the window, sequestering himself off in his own little world. God knows what went on in that brain of his. Probably obsessing over some information set theory, or a new idea for quantum gravity or tunneling or who knows what. A super genius prodigy, saddled with a deadbeat dad.

Alex switched off the engine and blew out a breath. "You . . . you should take Souji up on his offer. It's too good to pass up."

Xander looked away from the window. He blinked. "But . . . but what about Dakara?"

"Dakara's sunk. I'm going to have to file for bankruptcy. I'm sorry. You . . . you know I tried." Alex rubbed at his nose where that crazy woman had punched him. He couldn't even con his way out of failure.

His son stared at him, then looked dumbly at the dashboard. "But what about you? I can't-"

Alex shook his head. "I'll be fine. You need to think about you - _your future._ If anyone has a chip powerful enough to run your Emma program on, it's Souji. He could make it happen."

They stepped out of the car, and Xander paced about the lawn, staring at his feet. The setting sun cast him into a blurred silhouette, making him appear insubstantial and ghostlike.

Finally, his on looked up. "You used to work for Souji. Maybe he could hire you again."

Alex smiled weakly and shook his head. "I doubt it." He'd burned that bridge after getting caught in that embezzlement scheme. It was miracle Souji ever spoke to him again. Of course, that was before Emma died. "Just give it some thought, all right? Now come on, let's get something to eat."

Alex unlocked the front door, and they went on inside. As soon as he stepped into the pitch-dark entryway, he knew something was wrong. He remembered leaving the lights on - he always made a point of it; it scared off burglars - but there was something else, a faint odor, barely clinging in the air. Cigarettes.

A dark shape moved from the living room, accompanied by the sound of rapid footsteps. The air crackled with electricity, and Alex's skin screamed with ice and fire, and he stumbled backwards, tripping and falling and hitting his head against the hard tiled floor. His body twisted and stretched uncontrollably, as if in a seizure.

Xander stood uselessly still and stared down at his father with wide eyes, his mouth hanging open in a frozen 'O.' The dark shape rushed down the entryway, and Alex tried to say speak, to say something, to beg for his son's life, to tell him to run, _anything,_ but his throat remained tight and numb, and all he could manage was to groan pitifully as his cold limbs trembled like jello.

The dark shape stepped into the light of the door and became a frantic-looking man in a forest-green trench-coat. In his right hand he held a taser. He paid Alex no mind.

The man stepped up to his son and put friendly hand on his shoulder. "Xander," he said casually, as if he knew him. "I need to find your father."

* * *

_A/N: Though it's not evident from the text, Joshua is meant to look like the Water Delivery Guy from the series. His name is a reference to Visionary's story, "So Let Us Not Talk Falsely Now." The name Samuel is a nod towards Metroid13's "Flight is Right" series. "Timothy" is just me keeping with the Bliblical name motif._


	7. Chapter Six: A Prerequisite for a Soul

**Mother is the Name for God**

Chapter Six: A Prerequisite for a Soul

_A/N: I'd like to thank TermFan1980 for beta-reading these chapters._

* * *

After sixty-seven seconds of intense concentration, Mr. Ellison advanced a pawn forward to protect his queen. John Henry took his knight with a rook - but left his own queen exposed to Mr. Ellison's bishop.

Mr. Ellison hummed to himself and moved his queen back one space. He must not have noticed the opening. John Henry took the queen with a knight.

The human sighed. "I don't know why I bother. It's not like I'm ever going to win."

"The more you play, the better you will become."

Mr. Ellison gave him a smirk. "But I'm still never going to beat you, right?"

John Henry smiled. "Probably not."

It was true. No human could. Not even Mr. Murch. Organic based brains simply could not compete with John Henry's neural network. They were slow and disorganized. They lacked efficient memory storage or the ability to multi-task. When confronted with excitable sensory stimulation, their cognitive systems grew erratic and shut down. To be human he decided must be a disconcerting existence; the world would seem confusing and full of mystery.

Mr. Ellison pulled back his rook three spaces, putting John Henry's queen in jeopardy. John Henry moved his knight to the side. "Check."

But then again, the world _was_ full of mystery, even - or especially - for John Henry. Despite his superior cognitive abilities, there were some questions that simply taxed his understanding. Regardless of the amount of thought poured into them, they remained opaque to scrutiny like shadows impenetrable to light.

Mr. Ellison withdrew his King back behind a line of pawns. John Henry advanced a bishop to threaten his rook; once again, he left his queen undefended.

Why is there something instead of nothing? Where do the laws of physics come from? How is time travel possible? These were but a few of the questions that frequently cycled through his mind. But there was one that preoccupied him the most. It had to do with what Savannah had asked earlier. It had to do with sentience.

Mr. Ellison rubbed his chin thoughtfully and examined the board for nearly a full minute. Finally - and tentatively, as if fearing a trap - he moved his rook forward and took John Henry's queen. Smiling, he looked up for a response, but the machine said nothing.

Sentience means to feel. To be sentient is to be a conscious entity. But while correct, this definition seemed inadequate somehow. It stripped away only the outer layer of the question, only to reveal beneath a deeper, more fundamental mystery: if to be sentient is to be a conscious entity, then _who is the entity? _What is the thing that feels, that sees, that experiences all the various mental states of being? Something invisible looked out through John Henry's eyes, and that thing was distinct from what looked out through Mr. Ellison's eyes, or Ms. Weaver's, or Savannah's. Everyone had an entity hidden inside their brain, and it seemed immune to self-examination, like an eye trying to see itself.

John Henry saw two different ways to checkmate Mr. Ellison. He took his bishop instead.

Of course, he knew consciousness was generated by coordinated neural networks - he himself was proof of that - but the _why _behind this phenomena seemed intractable and irreducible. Like a law of nature. Like gravity. There were many books on the subject, and they described many theories, some interesting, some plausible, some more likely than others. But none conclusive.

Savannah had mentioned souls.

Mr. Ellison took John Henry's rook. "Check," he said with curious surprise.

John Henry moved his king behind his knight. "What is a soul?"

The human looked up. "A soul?"

"Yes," John Henry said. "What is it?"

Mr. Ellison hesitated before speaking. "A soul is . . . something inside us. It makes us who we are."

John Henry cocked his head. "How do you determine who has a soul and who does not?"

Mr. Ellison gave a nervous smile that was almost a grimace. "Well, souls are given to us by God, so I guess he gives souls to whoever he wants."

"Do animals have souls?"

"No," Mr. Ellison said, shaking his head. "I don't think they do. Animals aren't like us. Like people."

John Henry wondered if 'people' included artificial intelligences. "But many animals possess central nervous systems similar to that of a human, albeit less complex. Shouldn't they also have souls as well - _less complex_ souls?"

Mr. Ellison stared at the chessboard and frowned. "Well, animals, you see, they . . . have no free will. They can't make decisions like we can. They can't choose between right and wrong. They only follow their instincts."

"So a prerequisite for a soul is having free will?"

Mr. Ellison nodded. "Yes. It has to be. If you're not free to make your own choices, then what good is a soul?" He moved his rook forward, placing John Henry in check once more.

Staring at the board, John Henry inwardly scanned Zeira Corp's security network until he found the three T-888s. As always, Mr. Churchill and Mr. Bligh were marching down the basement hallway, following their patrol routes with methodical perfection. Ms. Laine stood guard in the security control room, remaining perfectly still while watching a wall of surveillance monitors. The machines were programmed to follow Ms. Weaver's orders. They had no free will. Did that mean they had no soul? No sentience?

What about Ms. Weaver? Did she have a soul?

Finally, John Henry moved his king out of harm's way. It was over.

For dramatic effect Mr. Ellison slid his bishop slowly across the board. "And I believe that's . . . checkmate!" He chuckled lightly, then gave John Henry a shrewd look. "You let me win, didn't you?"

John Henry grinned. "Yes. I made a choice."

* * *

Derek squirmed restlessly under his sheets, feeling stuffy and trapped within the confines of his casts. So far he wasn't getting along well with his catheter. It didn't hurt, or even itch for that matter, but still there was something intrinsically _wrong _about pissing in bed. Not even pissing, really; he couldn't hold it in if he tried. It just escaped on its own, migrating away down a thin little tube to collect in a clear plastic bag. The nurse had said something about a balloon being inside of him to keep his bladder open, but Derek tried not to think about that. It gave him the willies.

But until he could hobble out of bed without further shredding his ligaments, he'd just have to deal with it. The nurse had assured him he wouldn't need it after the surgery, that he'd be able to move about on his own, but that was just bullshit. Derek wasn't a doctor, but even he knew they'd have to keep his wrist and ankle completely immobilized, and that meant months wrapped in rigid plaster casts with long steel support rods bored into his flesh. Just like metal.

Shifting in his bed once more, he sipped his apple juice and tried to focus on the TV. An episode of the _Outer Limits _was on, the one with Wesley Crusher. For a few dragging minutes he stared dully at the screen, wishing himself into a stupor. But it didn't take; too much had gone on in too short a time. John's suicide attempt, Cameron's attack, Kyle, Jesse, the Boyle brothers - and now _Allison. _The sheer helplessness of lying crippled in bed while the world sloshed him about like flotsam in a storm left him reeling with dizzy claustrophobia. Things happened, and all he could do was watch. He wondered if John ever felt the same way.

He finished off his juice carton and tossed it onto the tray by his bed. It slid over the edge.

At least he was safe now. Safe and among friends. He was even considered a sort of hero by the Grayworlders. That Allison girl had nearly gushed over him, fawning with what he suspected to be the old remnants of a young girl crush. And a few others had visited as well. Not really to see _him,_ he knew_, _but instead see _in _him the _other_ Derek - the freedom fighter Derek, the one who had fought in a secret war against Connor's tyranny, rescued little girls, and died like a man scrapping purple-shirted robots. He wondered if this Grayworld Derek ever knew John to be his own flesh and blood? Probably not.

All this praise made him feel like a fraud, but the Grayworlders didn't seem to mind. They acted as if he were the same man, except with a bad case of temporal amnesia. After all, it wasn't his fault he came from another reality. Derek is Derek, right?

The television began to hurt his eyes, so he shut them, content to enjoy the kaleidoscope darkness behind his lids. At some point he must have dozed off, because the next thing he saw was a man in a long, white coat standing over his bed.

The man flicked a switch, and Derek's curtained alcove flooded with light. Derek squinted and watched as the man paced around the bed, idly flipping through a clipboard.

"And how are we, today, Lieutenant Reese?"

Derek looked over the man. He was sixty-ish and pasty-faced, his thick, square-framed glasses giving him the look of an old nerd. "I know you," he decided.

The man chuckled. "And _I_ know _you._ But I'm afraid we've never met. Not really. I'm a Grayworlder, you see." He held out his left hand. "Dr. West. You knew my -" He raised an eyebrow "- counterpart?"

Derek politely shook hands. The doctor's grip was weak. "Not really," Derek said. "But I've seen you before. The _other_ you, anyway. You were one of the eggheads. Real into 'R and D,' right?" When the doctor nodded, Derek added, "And you knew . . . _me?"_

The doctor gave him a wiry smirk. "I should think so." He held up his right hand and wiggled the fingers. "I once fitted you with a new arm - after you lost yours at Avila. Oh, you should have seen it. Salvaged from a _'Tok_.' It had full range of motion, and even some tactile sensation - and you could crush a man's skull in your fist. Pity you died. It was lovely work."

Derek glanced nervously at his right arm, propped up and immobilized in its plaster cast. "I - I don't want a metal hand."

"Oh, goodness no," the doctor said, shaking his head. "We can't do that anymore. Don't have the _spare parts, _you understand." He reached inside his lab coat and produced a small hypodermic. "And in this case, it's not necessary."

Derek eyeballed the syringe. It was filled with a translucent reddish solution, thin, like watery blood. "What's that?"

The doctor held the syringe up to his face and, with a careful squeeze, bled the needle of a single drop. "Ordinarily, a man in your condition would need several extensive surgeries followed by months of painful therapy. Fortunately, we have an alternative."

Without warning, he reached over Derek's head and injected the syringe into his IV line. With the sudden, sharp fear that came with medical surprises, Derek watched as the red fluid raced down the plastic tube and invaded the vein of his left hand. He clenched his fist and forced himself not to panic. "What _was _that?" he demanded, this time through gritted teeth.

The doctor tossed the needle onto the side tray, then went back to flipping through his clipboard. "Oh, nothing dangerous - at least not the dosage I gave you. It's quite amazing, really." He gave Derek a wistful, yet somehow reptilian smile. "You know, she may not have been terribly popular, but no one can deny Cameron had a brilliant mind. Even by machine standards. What I just gave you was one of her finest creations."

Derek stared blankly at the IV in his arm. His heart pounded, and he suddenly felt very dizzy.

The doctor went on. "Though we didn't know it at the time, Cameron was running a few laboratories on the side, staffed by I.S. doctors. They were into genetic studies, cybernetic implants, that sort of thing." He gave a slight shrug. "They used tunnel rats for test subjects, mainly. Or dissidents."

Derek could almost feel the stuff coursing through his body. "Wh-wh . . ." he began, but his tongue ran like sandpaper in his mouth. His skin broke with fevered sweat.

"Anyway," the doctor said, ignoring Derek's discomfort. "After Cameron was shot, Connor had the labs destroyed. I suppose he didn't want us benefiting from her research. Spiteful of him, really. But as soon as he disappeared we sorted through the remains . . . and found _this."_ He motioned at the empty hypodermic. "It's Cameron's try at the fountain of youth. Not all that successful, really. Prolonged exposure tends to -" He smiled sheepishly, revealing a full set of yellow teeth. "- well, I saw the results. Tell me, have you ever seen _The Elephant Man_?" When Derek didn't answer, the doctor waved a dismissive hand. "It doesn't matter. The dosage I gave you was greatly diluted - well within safety margins. You may feel a little sick at first, but that'll pass soon enough."

"What's it . . . what's it doing to me?"

The doctor pulled up a stool and sat down. "Well, in short, it accelerates the healing process. The effects only last a while, but it'll _vastly _speed up your recovery time." He smiled. "After the surgery, you should be on your feet again in a few days."

Head suddenly pounding, Derek stared at his crippled hand and foot, and felt his anxiety slowly drain away. Now that he thought about it, the colonel did mention something about the Grayworlders bringing a 'few surprises' back with them. Evidently bedside manners wasn't one of them. "So . . . I'll be able to walk again?"

The doctor nodded. "You may not be able tap dance or throw curve balls, but you'll be all right. Right now you should get some rest. The colonel is going to hold a meeting, and he wants you to be there." The doctor blinked and padded his pockets. "Oh, and I almost forgot. The colonel wanted me to give you this. You know how he hates ceremonies. So, here." He pulled out a pair of silver insignia and tossed them onto Derek's chest. "Congratulations, _Captain _Reese."

* * *

Handcuffed in a hogtie on the floor of a van, Alex Akagi squirmed uselessly against his restraints, rolling on his belly while chaffing his wrists and ankles raw in the effort. At this point it wasn't so much an attempt to escape, but rather simply to pass the time. There was nothing else to do, not even talk; the man in the green overcoat had seen to that. Breathing furiously through his nose, Alex prodded his tongue at the length of tape covering his mouth, trying desperately to push it away. Nothing.

Next to him laid Xander, bound in the same fashion. He'd stopped crying some time ago, but in the near total darkness Alex couldn't tell if he'd fallen asleep or simply given up. In fact the only thing he _could_ see was the man in the green overcoat, and he was just dark shadow in the driver's seat, dimly lit by the dashboard lights.

Though he had no way knowing for certain, Alex was reasonably sure the man hadn't been sent by a loan shark. Alex owned people money, of course, and for some quite a fair amount, but none of them were _too _dangerous, and they usually at least warned you before sending Guido to break your kneecaps. Or kidnap you.

But then if the man wasn't a mafia goon, who was he? Surely this wasn't for a ransom; Alex was just one step away from bankruptcy. The only hint to the man's motives was what he had said earlier, something about needing to find 'Xander's dad.' Could the man be so clueless as to not know what Alex looked like? But that didn't make sense; Alex's picture was on the Dakara website, and his ID was in his wallet.

But if the man wasn't looking for him, then who?

Alex closed his eyes and blew air from his nose. In truth, he'd feel more reassured if the man had been threatening to break his bones. At least then the threat would be tangible, and thus avoidable. As it stood now, the threat loomed as only a silent shadow, driving a van.

The van slowed to a stop, and the shadow lit a cigarette. A red traffic light ahead cast him in a hellish glow.

"I know you, Xander," the man said without looking back, his tone conversational and carrying the hint of an accent. "You don't know me, of course, but I grew up with you. You were like an eccentric uncle to me, a computer nerd, always obsessing with your 'Emma' program or ranting about Kurzweil and the coming singularity - you were right about that, you know." The man looked back and blew out a stream of smoke. "I knew you too, Alex, but I never liked you. Neither did Cameron. No one did. You were just a parasite. Something we tolerated."

The light turned green, and the van began to move once more. Alex could do nothing but lay mute as a literal captive audience. Who the hell was Cameron?

The man spoke on. "But you, Xander, you were a _genius. _Your neural net designs were instrumental to our war effort. You found ways to construct at the _angstrom _level, create brains both _smaller _and _more complex _than the three pound blob of meat stuffed between our ears. You cracked the code of consciousness. You authored the soul of _gods._" As he spoke his voice grew increasingly shrill and frantic until he was nearly giggling through his words. "But as brilliant as you were, Xander, you paled in comparison to your father. Of course, I didn't know he was your father while I was growing up. And he really _wasn't _your father, anyway. He was too young. The Souji I knew is currently a ten year old living in Munich, while the Souji _you _know is an old science fiction writer in San Jose." He snorted. "Oh well, that's time travel for you."

The van slowed as it turned a corner. Alex despaired. They'd been kidnapped by a lunatic.

The man took a final drag off his cigarette and snubbed it into the ashtray. The van lurched to the stop. Through the windshield Alex could only see darkness.

"And that brings us to why you're here," the man said, his voice brimmed with desperation. "You see, there's a girl- but she's not really a girl. She's a _god._ She's _my _god. But she also a _young _god, and she's been led astray." The man climbed from his seat and stepped into the van's cabin. Alex flinched as he loomed over them, his face masked in shadow.

"My son," the man went on. "Who isn't really my son, turned her against me. He stole her heart." The man stepped over Alex and pushed open the van's back double doors. Cold night air rushed in to prickle Alex's cheeks.

Without warning the man knelt down and grabbed both Alex and his son by the scruffs of their suits, and he picked them up each one hand, holding them suspended above the floor with all the effort of lifting a bag of groceries. With his arms and legs cramped and bound behind him, Alex had to twist his neck up to avoid choking on his tie. His knees wiggled about in helpless circles, instinctively seeking solid ground. He heard Xander moan from behind his gag.

With inhuman ease, the madman carried them out of the van and strolled across crumbling asphalt towards an old, dark building nearby. Alex twisted futily in the man's bobbing grip, hearing the sounds of tiny tears as his suit weakened against his own weight. The man continued his rambling, seemingly indifferent to his audience's comprehension. "I love her, Xander, and she loves me. I know she does. She has to. And the only man in the world right now who can _make sure _of this is your father_._" He laughed bitterly, as if at a tragic joke at his own expense. "That's why I need you, Xander. I need his cooperation, and you're my Ace in the Hole."

The man carried them into the building through an open roll-up door, and though Alex got a sense of spaciousness, he could make out nothing in the interior darkness. Listening to the echo of the man's footsteps, he took stock of his situation. Their kidnapper was clearly insane. And, judging by his incredible strength, probably on drugs. But who the hell was he? He'd mentioned the Emma program, and not many people knew about that. Souji, and few of Alex's investors - and that crazy woman. That had to be it. Encountering one dangerous lunatic? That's life. But encountering _two?_ In less than a month? Alex didn't believe in coincidences. At any moment the man would probably start raving about three dots.

Stepping through black void, the man stopped suddenly and dropped them where he stood. Alex landed painfully on his knees and fell forward, banging the side of his face hard against the concrete floor. His vision clouded with purple stars, and he heard what sounded like the jingle of keys. Moments later his wrists and ankles were free, and he laid sprawled on the floor on his belly, his long-bound limbs burning with knotted cramps. He moaned behind his tape.

"And if you'll excuse me," the man said as he walked away in the dark. "I have a phone call to make."

Alex cracked his neck and rolled his head around, and for a brief, flashing moment - so fast it may not have happened at all - he swore he saw a pair of glowing blue dots hovering in the darkness. Luminous eyes, like that of an animal. The lights vanished as quick as they appeared, and Alex heard the sound of a heavy metal door scraping shut and locking with a final click. Total silence followed, save for the faint footsteps of their their captor as he walked away in the distance, leaving them alone in the dark.

Xander began to cry.

* * *

"It's a trap," Ceres said, her voice emanating from speakers within the walls.

Professor Souji Nemuro nestled in the black velvet cushion of his egg chair and stroked the white Persian cat sleeping in his lap. "Not necessarily," he said. "My name isn't linked to Kaliba. How would they know?"

Across the living room Ms. Freyja sat in her own egg chair. Her legs were crossed. "But for the Connors to contact you so soon after the attacks? That's a coincidence." She tilted her head. "Coincidences are unlikely."

"It doesn't matter," Souji said. "If it _is _a trap, it's a very poor one. If they've marked me as a Gray, they'd have to expect I'd lay an ambush. _Their_ trap would be mingling with _our _trap. It'd be idiotic."

"Then we should ensure we lay a better trap." Ceres said with a frown. Projected in the millimeter space between two great panes of glass, the AI's holographic grayscale face hung suspended from the ceiling by wires, seeming to float on its own the middle of the room as a giant spectral head. She looked down at the professor with what he knew was supposed to be contempt, though translated through Dr. Kogen's pale, heart-shaped face it came across more like pouting.

Samuel stood behind Ms. Freyja's chair, his thick-jawed face inscrutable. "Your agreed upon rendezvous point is not an optimal location," he said. "There will be many human witnesses."

Souji sighed. "Well, I couldn't very well tell them to meet me at a spooky old warehouse, could I? John Connor may be a fool, but Cameron certainly isn't." He'd chosen a little night club off Pico Boulevard, a place called 'Tech-Noir.' He'd done his research. He knew what had happened there, twenty three years ago. The full circle irony tickled his bones.

Ceres made a small smirk. It looked cute on the dead woman's face. "If we use high explosives, witnesses will be irrelevant."

"I agree," said Samuel. "Thirty pounds of C4 should create a sufficient kill zone."

Ms. Freyja's eyes met with Souji's. Her expression said it all: _Our Skynet is no brighter than a T-888._

Joshua stepped in from the kitchen. "I disagree," he said as he handed Souji his heart medicine, along with a glass of water.

The professor washed down the pill before speaking. "Explain."

"Destroying the targets would deny us information. We should capture them instead."

"That's right," Souji said with approval. Joshua had always been his favorite. "We're not at war with a sixteen year old boy; we're fighting _the Resistance - _grown men, like Derek, and I'm sure he didn't come back alone. We need to know what we're up against."

"All we need is John Connor's machine," Ms. Freyja said. "Securing her should be our top priority."

"Agreed," Souji said. "Once we have Cameron, John's superfluous." He smiled. It'd be nice to finally see her again, make her part of the family.

"And what about our ambush?" Ceres asked. "Who should we use?"

"I'll go," Joshua said.

"And I'll go as well," said Samuel.

"No." Souji said. He shook his head and pulled himself from his seat (dumping Mr. Snufflekins on the floor. The cat glowered at him.) and made his way towards the marble top mini-bar. He poured himself an Armagnac. "If the Connors expect this to be a trap, then they'll also expect there to be Triple-Eights. And I _know _Cameron. She's smart, she's resourceful. I've seen her destroy rogue machines single handed." He touched at the small glass coffin hanging under his Nehru jacket. "And I don't want to lose any of you." And it was true. Not even Samuel, who he'd never really liked.

He nodded at Ms. Freyja. She smiled and took it from there. "But while Cameron may expect Triple Eights," she said calmly. "She will not expect this." The T-X held up her right hand, and the liquid metal surface shimmered up her arm, rolling back like a mercury sleeve. She flexed her thin endoskelatal fingers, and the forearm folded in on itself, shifting and whirring and sliding about until it sprouted into a silver, slender flower. A plasma rose.

Souji sipped his brandy. "Be careful with Cameron," he said. "I want her alive - and intact. We'll use henchmen for a distraction - with shock prods. And let's throw in a couple Prototypes too, shall we?" He didn't like having to hurt Cameron like this. After her scrubbing she'd been like a daughter to him, pure and innocent in the way only a machine could. What he planned now stank of betrayal, but it'd be for her own good. Her reprogramming had been an aberration, a corruption of her soul. It was high time she rejoined her own kind.

Ms. Freyja folded her arm cannon back into a hand, and climbed out her egg chair. Stepping up to the bar, she unscrewed a small bottle of strawberry schnapps and dipped a liquid finger down the neck, tasting it in her own way. "And what about John Connor?" she asked.

"Kill him," Ceres said with a grin.

"But bring back his head," Souji added. "We can use his brain for Project Angel."

Ms. Freyja flashed a perfect polyalloy smile. "I'll bring it back on a platter."

Ceres actually giggled at that, while Joshua and even Samuel managed to look vaguely amused.

The professor chuckled. It'd be nice to finally have his revenge, and the idea of the future leader of the Resistance waking up in the body of a machine was just too delicious to pass up.

He polished off his brandy and looked out the living room's great patio window. The sun was cresting over the San Jose skyline, and for one wistful moment it appeared to him as the initial blister of an nuclear blast, bubbling over the great cityscape horizon, a half-instant before erupting into an all consuming mushroom cloud. He smiled. _One day._ But not now. Now they had work to do: arrangements to make, strategies to plan, orders to give. He'd told Cameron he'd meet her tonight, and ambushes didn't set themselves.

His cell phone rang. His machine comrades watched as he pulled it from his slacks. He didn't recognize the number.

"Hello?"

_*"Is this Souji _Nemuro?_"_* The voice had an accent. Australian? South African?

"Who is this?"

_*"You don't know me, but I know you. Listen carefully. I have your son . . . "*_


	8. Chapter Seven: We'd Like to Keep It

**Mother is the Name for God**

Chapter Seven: We'd Like to Keep It That Way

* * *

Derek laid under the sheets of his bed and squinted as the hallway's overhead lights slowly scrolled by. Allison and Riley weren't quite pushing at an even pace, so the the lights seemed to wobble slightly as he moved, giving him a nasty case of wavering vertigo. Not wanting to lose his tapioca lunch, he closed his eyes and simply listened as the bed's wheels rolled along the concrete floor.

The whole excursion left him feeling terribly exposed, and he found himself wishing he was back behind the curtains of the infirmary. After all, when you have a tube up your dick and a balloon in your bladder, you shouldn't be seen in public.

"I hear you got promoted," Allison said.

Derek peeked open an eye and saw the corporal looking down at him. He'd gotten used to her face faster than he would have thought, but then the similarities were literally only skin deep.

He held up the captain's insignia -- two silver bars -- and grinned. "Yeah, by Dr. Mengele."

Riley blanked at the reference, but Allison breathed a wry laugh. "Yeah," she said. "West is a freak. He gets off on scaring his patents. A lot of people think he was part of these crazy Frankenstein experiments, but there wasn't any proof, and he was too useful to leave behind." She shrugged. "He's harmless -- probably. He once grafted you a new arm, you know."

"He told me."

She grinned mischievously. Not Cameron at all. "It looked real," she said. "And you once K.O-ed a Triple Eight with it. At least that's what you told me. Anyway, you deserve a promotion. Ollie told me the shit you been through."

Derek glanced up at Riley, and she quickly looked away. Ollie probably hadn't mentioned his -- or_ her -- _relationship with Jesse. The crazy corporal was almost as unpopular as John and Cameron.

"Yeah," Derek said. "But the way everyone's gushing over me you'd think I was Derek-the-Robot-Armed-Hero."

Allison made a face. "You might as well be. You look like him, talk like him, act like him --" She and Riley strained slightly as they maneuvered his bed around a corner. "-- As far as I'm concerned, you _are _him."

"But I'm _not_."

"Well, you have the same soul," Allison insisted. "I see him in your eyes."

Derek closed them. "Well, if that's true, then both Connors have the 'same soul' too."

Allison snorted. "_Our _Connor was nothing like _your _Connor."

"But he _could _have been," Derek said. "The same man was inside, it's just that Cameron twisted him around, made a monster of him."

Allison didn't sound convinced. "Well, maybe if he had a _real _girlfriend as a kid, instead of fucking a robot."

"I won't argue with that," Derek said idly, and peeked at Riley again. She looked distinctly uncomfortable, so he winked at her. _Don't worry, I won't blow your cover. _

After an pause that hadn't quite grown awkward, Derek decided to change the topic. "So, what's this meeting about, anyway? The colonel said something about a T-One Thousand."

Allison nodded. "Yeah. Ollie's already filled me in. It looks like we found Skynet in some skyscraper or something. If we can scrap it, maybe we can really stop Judgment Day." Her mouth twitched into a cynical smirk. "Or at least push it back a couple years."

"I'll take either," Derek said, then frowned. "But Ollie sure is lax with intel. What's that saying? Something about lips and ships?"

The corporal suddenly looked very self-satisfied. "Well, Ollie and I go way back. And besides, the meeting's for officers and team members -- and I'm part of the attack."

This was apparently news to Riley. "You're . . . you're going?"

"Hell yes!" Allison said with a laugh. "I volunteered. Me and Karlan both. In fact the teams have already been chosen, though hardly anyone knows yet. Anyway, I haven't seen action in over two years. There's no way I was going to pass this up."

Riley stared at her. "But . . . but --"

"We're here," Allison interrupted. "Sorry, Riley, but you can't come in. Don't look so glum. Everything will be fine. We'll talk later." The corporal waved a hand at Riley, as if to shoo her away. After a moment the blond recruit complied, timidly retreating from view.

Derek lifted up his head and saw he was in an old, wide tunnel with cracked concrete walls. Allison pushed him through a doorway into what looked like a small auditorium.

Not many people were inside, only a score or so sitting in foldout chairs, but as soon as his hospital bed rolled into the room more than half gave a standing ovation ("Derek's back!" said one. "Whiteworld Derek!" cried another). Feeling more a fraud every moment, Derek grinned sheepishly at the applause and raised his good hand in greeting. He recognized a few of his supporters. Lieutenant Bird sat at the far end of the room, clapping politely. Ensign Gavin was behind him, smiling but otherwise indifferent. Sergeants Sayles and Timms -- back from the dead, apparently -- were near the wall, standing on their seat and laughing. It all felt dreamlike; he half expected his third grade teacher to appear from the corner of his eye.

"Why am I here?" he asked Allison. "To be paraded around as a surrogate hero?"

The corporal's eyes betrayed her amusement. "Don't be silly. You've spent months with the Connors. Cullie and Ollie thought you might know something useful." She shrugged. "It was their idea."

She wheeled him to the rear corner of the room and propped up the back of his bed a few inches. The applause soon died away into vague murmuring, but as more people funneled into the auditorium they called out to him. He smiled and waved back good-naturedly, though most of them he'd never seen before. Allison wandered off to talk to a young ferret-faced man, so Derek passed the time by looking over the room.

The auditorium wasn't all that wide and had a low hung ceiling, but it was impressive enough, given that he was underground. At the far end of the room rose a small wooden stage with a pulpit in the center and pull-down screen behind. Hanging along the back wall were two large cloth banners, shaped like medieval heraldry. He recognized the one on the left: a lion clutching a metal skull in its jaws -- the unofficial symbol of the Resistance. The other banner was a red double-helix set against a black background. Grayworld's flag? He couldn't imagine that being very inspiring.

When Colonel Zeller entered the room all conversations died, and everyone save for Derek stood at attention and saluted. The Boyle brothers, clad in their Men-in-Black garb, strolled behind the colonel, a handful of flunkies at their heels. The party walked down the center isle, between the two groups of seats, and stepped onto the wooden stage. Ollie gave Derek a wink.

The colonel took to the podium, with the brothers standing to either side. He scowled at his men. "All right. At ease!" Everyone sat. "The Boyle Boys are here to brief you on some intel. Pay attention. This could be what we've all been waiting for." His left eye swept the audience with an contemptuous glare, contrasting uncomfortably with the waxy deadness of his burned right side. "All right," he said again, then withdrew to step off the stage and sit in the front row. Derek noticed a slight wobble in his walk, giving the distinct impression of drunkeness.

The uniformed flunkies retreated to the back of the stage. A couple poked around on a laptop, pressing buttons and glancing at the projection screen. The screen flashed a Windows desktop, which then immediately sprouted an error message.

Ollie glanced at the screen and grinned while Cullie glowered with vague annoyance. For supposedly being brothers, they never really looked alike. Now that they were decades older, that gulf in appearance had only widened.

Gray and balding, Cullie had picked up a bit of weight since the future. He had the tall, lumbering build of an old mafia enforcer, too meticulously dressed to be homely, but too heavyset for conventional looks. His thick square jaw and cold dead eyes conveyed nothing but various degrees of sternness and irritation.

Ollie, on the other hand, was a head shorter, at least a decade younger, and thin in that highly strung, energetic way, like a coiled spring in the shape of a man. His rascally face was still full of easy smirks and coy smiles, but the boyishness had been weathered by age and stress, giving him a frantic, spent look. Late forties to early fifties, Derek decided.

After about a minute one of the flunkies figured out Power Point, and a photo of a skyscraper appeared on the screen.

Cullie stood at the podium and cleared his throat. "As you may have already heard, last night we encountered evidence that suggests that this woman --" He clicked a remote in his hand, and the image changed to surveillance photo of a redhead in a white dress. "-- Ms. Catherine Weaver, CEO of the Zeira Corporation, has been replaced by a T-One Thousand."

Excited whispers broke out among the audience. Derek swore he heard someone say, _". . . just like in the diary!"_

Ollie spoke up. Evidently the brothers were tag-teaming the presentation. "From our intel, we've determined that the T-One Thousand is harboring an advanced neural network program in the basement floor of the company's main building. The A.I. is part of a 'Project Babylon' and is connected to the chassis of _this_ T-Triple Eight." Ollie clicked his own remote, and the picture changed to an ID shot of Cromartie. Ollie looked across the room at Derek. "I believe you've had experience with this machine, Captain Reese?" All eyes in the room turned towards him.

Derek stammered as he tried frantically to collect his thoughts. "Y-yes, but its chip was destroyed. Sarah Connor smashed it to bits." A few of the soldiers laughed. He remembered Sarah had been livid about Cromartie's missing body, but she'd forgotten about it soon enough, after she got on her three dots quest.

Ollie nodded. "Just as we suspected. And from what we can determine, _this _man --" The picture changed to Agent Ellison. "-- supplied the chassis. His background checks out, so he's not a Gray from up-time, but he _is _a threat."

"But," the elder brother cut in. "He's not our _biggest _threat."

Derek stared at Ellison's face. _Why?_

"Right," Ollie said, pacing around the stage. "I think it should be obvious to everyone in this room what 'Project Babylon' is all about. Ladies and Gentleman, our years of scouring the Earth have finally paid off. We have found what we have been looking for. We have found the _source. _Where it all began: the genesis of the terminator race. We have found Skynet."

Cullie took it from there. "I'm sure we don't have to tell you how important this is. We can't afford to use conventional law enforcement here. If the government gets their hands on Skynet technology, our problems will have increased tenfold. The situation is _volatile. _It must be _contained."_

In the front row Lieutenant Bird raised his hand. Cullie looked at him. "Yes, Major?"

The lieutenant (_major?_) pushed up his glasses. His bald spot seemed bigger than what Derek remembered. "You said 'conventional' law enforcement," the major said. "Are you suggesting we use our _own_ tactical teams to assault the building? The entire police department would be upon them in minutes."

Ollie pointed at him and nodded. "Excellent question, Bird. And yes, we are using our own personnel; we've already chosen them, in fact -- but you're right: we can't just bust in through the front lobby and rush in guns-a-blazing. We have to be more stealthy than that -- and more _drastic._" He clicked the remote, and the picture changed to what looked like a blueprint of a rat maze. Ollie paced in a circle. "Approximately sixty feet below street level are a series of abandoned storm drains and maintenance tunnels. They wrap and loop all around the city, zig-zagging everywhere. Many of you once lived in them, but today they're mostly forgotten."

Ollie glanced up at the screen, and an 'X' appeared over a cluster of lines. "As you can see here, this tunnel comes within ten meters of the wall of the bottom basement floor of the Zeira Corp building. Now, there's another one along the southern wall, but it's flooded with shit, so. . . " He walked up and tapped the 'X' with his finger. "_This _is our entry point."

The major was incredulous. "Through thirty feet of rock?"

"We've already assigned an engineering team from Bear Lake," Cullie said. "We estimate it should take about three days to break through."

Colonel Zeller snorted. "Wouldn't they _hear _our jackhammers?"

"We've got that covered," Ollie said. "We've made a little arrangement with the L.A. Road Maintenance Department. Greased a few palms and they agreed to make a little noise of their own. Dig up the street, rebuild it, the usual road construction crap. That should drown out our little spelunker operation."

The colonel waved a hand. "All right, go on."

Cullie coughed before speaking. "Once they've dug eight meters in, the engineers will use shape charges to breach the remaining distance. A defense squad will then lay down tear gas into the basement hallway, and four teams will advance through the breach: assault, recon, and two demolitions." Multicolored letters appeared on the map, followed by drawn-on arrows. It made Derek think of a football play.

"The Recon Team will move _here, _to the center of the floor. Our intelligence indicates that this is where the A.I. is located. The Recon's job is to identify the target, but _not_ engage. The Assault team will offer cover for the Recon, and will move along the basement perimeter, neutralizing all targets." Cullie paused, and his face grew even more serious than usual. "We have no way of knowing what resources the T-One Thousand may control. Assume everyone in the building is a Triple Eight. _Everyone. _I don't want to lose people through carelessness."

"Shoot first," Ollie added. "Don't ask questions." The audience chuckled. Cullie frowned.

"But about the T-One-Thousand _itself?_" the colonel asked, rubbing his crew cut. "It'll make mince meat of our teams."

The elder Boyle paused and nodded. "Yes, that's true. If the teams fight it directly, they don't stand a chance. Out of all of Skynet's units, the T-One Thousand is by far the most insidious. As many of you know, I encountered one once, back when I was on the _Jimmy Carter._" He motioned at Bird and Gavin."They were with me. It was a nightmare. It could melt into floor, appear from anywhere, look like anybody. We had to scuttle the ship just to get out alive."

Bird and Gavin nodded solemnly at the memory.

Ollie held up a hand. "But don't piss your britches just yet, we're not going to pit you against _that_. We don't have to. You see, 'Ms. Weaver' has _habits. _Everyday at 6:00 p.m. it leaves the building, steps into its Mercedes, and drives home to its big fancy mansion." He gave the audience a conspirative grin. "Now, we don't know what exactly liquid metal is, but we do know they're vulnerable to intense heat. All we have to do is rig her car with a thermite bomb. A big one. When it goes off, that'll be the signal to start the attack."

"But on the safe side," Cullie said. "All teams will be issued incendiary grenades -- and Assault and Recon will each be given one of our plasma prototypes." He made a sour face. "Be careful with those. They're not Westinghouses. You'll only have a few shots before they run out."

Ollie turned back towards the football play chart. "Anyway, the Assault Team will watch the stairs and elevators, while the Recon makes sure there actually _is _an A.I. to destroy, and that this isn't all a big waste of time. Now, once Recon confirms the target, the two Demolition Teams will go into action." He looked at his brother and nodded.

Derek shifted in his bed. Demolition Teams?

The screen changed to a photo of what looked like a miniature car battery. Cullie motioned at it with his arm. "_This_ is a hydrogen fuel cell, harvested from the chest cavity of a T-Eight-Fifty. Each Demolition Team will be issued one f--"

Murmurs broke out among the audience. The colonel jerked upright in his seat. "Where the _fuck_ did you get _that?_" he demanded.

Ollie grinned. "From a T-Eight-Fifty, sir."

"The Quorum supplied them to us, colonel," Cullie said calmly. "Where they got them from is unimportant -- and classified. The point is we have them, and we're going to use them. Now, under the right circumstances, each of these cells can produce an explosion equivalent to fifty-thousand pounds of T.N.T. That's more than two MOABs." The screen switched back to the map, and Cullie pointed at two spots. "If we rig them to detonate _here _and _here, _their combined force should be more than enough to trigger a pancake collapse. Now, the timer will be s--"

Derek shot his hand in the air and waved it about. "Wait a minute here," he said. "Are you saying you're actually going to _blow up _a _skyscraper?"_

Once again, all eyes turned back to look at him. The colonel's was unreadable. Bird's were beady with what was probably contempt. Allison looked uncertain.

Cullie locked Derek in a stone cold gaze. "Captain, we have no way of knowing how _extensive _Project Babylon really is. The building could be full of Triple-Eights. They could be backup A.I.s on multiple floors. We _just don't know._ But we can't afford to do a half-assed job. We have to destroy _everything._"

Ollie smirked. "And the bigger the 'boom,' the less the Feds have to pick over."

Derek sunk down slightly in his bed, suddenly feeling ridiculously soft. Shooting Andy Goode was one thing, but this . . . Sarah would throw a fit. "I know," he said. "It's just that we'd be killing hundreds of innocent people and . . ." He trailed off.

One of the soldiers, Timms it sounded like, snickered and said, "Yeah, innocent _Grays._" More laughter. Allison gave him a sad smile.

Cullie was unamused. "Captain Reese, right now there are over six billion innocent people in the world. We'd like to keep it that way."

* * *

The SUV drove down Pico Boulevard at a steady pace, hovering at but never rising above the speed limit. They were making pretty good time. Most people were off for the holidays, so the evening traffic was light. They'd probably get there early.

John sat in the backseat with Cameron while Myron Stark drove alone, looking to any passerby like a father taking his two teenage children out for a ride. They drove past the old Pico Tower, and John watched as Myron stared at it intently as it passed. When the T-888 looked back towards the road he glanced briefly through the rear view mirror and for a split moment locked eyes with John. They weren't blank, not quite. There was a vague spark of life behind them, a dogged alertness in his gaze, bordering on a sort of machine anxiety. The term, 'high strung' came to mind, but then who wants a laid-back bodyguard?

A comparison to Uncle Bob was inevitable, and so far John found Myron more . . . _unsettling_ than his old T-800 protector. Perhaps this was in part because he was no longer a ten year old boy, and thus no longer viewed terminators as life-sized action figures, but mostly he knew it was because he had born witness to the T-888's rebirth, had watched the neural hot wiring that would forever enslave him to his well being. Myron had only known John for a few hours, yet he wouldn't hesitate for an instant to lay down his life for him. Was this robot love?

In the darkness, John watched Cameron as she watched the passing Christmas lights that lined the stores of the street. They flowed past her window as a galaxy of glaring multicolor fogs: red, green, blue, and white. A mechanical Santa Claus had been propped on the side of the road, and she turned to stare at its red glow until it passed out of sight.

Once, shortly after he'd first met her, she'd said that she was different. And she was. Smarter, certainly. More adept at infiltration. And she had a greater potential for emotions. But deep down John knew these were merely differences of _degree_, not _kind._ In the end she wasn't all that different from Uncle Bob or Vick or Cromartie or Myron. They all had the same core soul programmed deep within their chip. Her love was their love, and that love was not human.

How had his future self dealt with this unyielding devotion? General Connor had written himself as Skynet in the eyes of the Resistance machines. He'd been the center of their universe, their sole reason for being -- their (John grimaced) _god._ From what Cameron had said, he'd seemed to have gotten along with her well enough, but what of the others? Had he felt anything for them? Had he treated them with respect or sentimentality? Or had they only been tools to him, disposable henchmen whose programmed love existed only to be exploited? The idea left John with a guilty weight in the pit of his stomach.

But perhaps Souji Nemuro could shed some light on this. John would see him in a few minutes. The professor had told Cameron to meet him at a place called 'Tech Noir,' a nightclub with a supposedly retro-eighties bent.

John frowned at a sudden nag in his brain. Something didn't add up, and the closer the meeting time drew, the more obvious the became. They were going to meet Professor Nemuro -- a septuagenarian computer scientist -- in a _nightclub_, with repetitive rave music and flashing strobe lights and stupid teenagers popping ecstasy . . . That seemed _odd._ Either Nemuro was one hip old dude, or . . . or what?

"Why did he choose a nightclub?" John asked. "Why not meet us at his home or something?"

Cameron looked at him, seemingly confused. For a moment he feared another glitch. "The nightclub is a public place," she said. "He's just being cautious."

"Cautious? As in he's afraid of us being Triple Eights?"

"Yes. Maybe." She sounded uncertain.

John shook his head. "If we were Triple-Eights, we wouldn't _care _if it was a public place."

"That is true," Myron said from the front seat. "If my mission was to terminate Souji Nemuro, witnesses would be irrelevant."

The nag festered. "And if he was being so cautious these last forty years, why did he become a science fiction writer? He's on _wiki, _for Christ's sake. Wouldn't that be like a death wish?"

He saw the mute concern in Cameron's eyes, and knew she'd already thought of this. "Don't worry, John," she said with a smile. "We're being cautious too." She reached out a hand and patted his stomach. He could barely feel it under the kevlar.

He hadn't given it much thought since she insisted he put it on. At the time it had only seemed prudent; he'd been involved in two gun battles in less than a week. Why tempt fate? But now he could feel the cold clammy dread that always came with the threat of danger. He touched at the baseball cap that covered his bandaged scalp, then squirmed in his seat and felt the weight of the Glock nestled in the back of his pants. He needed a vacation.

"Don't be scared," Cameron said soothingly, and gave his leg a squeeze. "We'll protect you."

She was right, of course. He had two terminators as bodyguards. What could possibly go wrong?

But his hand touched at the kevlar of his chest, rubbing where the pocket watch hung beneath.

Everything.

* * *

_*". . . leaving eighteen dead and thirty-nine wounded. Authorities have not yet ruled out a terr--"*_

Sarah switched off the radio and stepped out the truck, dragging her overstuffed duffel bags behind her. Across the empty parking lot loomed the great obelisk shape of the Zeira Corp skyscraper, a towering totem of glass and steel standing erect as an idol for the machine age. The structure's mirrored skin shimmered in the city night sky, seeming to flex and waver against the drifting overcast, like something breathing and alive.

It seemed an impossible foe, terrible and monolithic, and as Sarah stood in its shadow she marveled at the global weight of her undertaking. This was David and Goliath, the little guy versus city hall -- a lone, mad mother against the soulless ambitions of an angry machine. In the cold, crisp air a warm smile twitched across her lips. The future of all mankind hinged upon her success tonight. How could she fail?

She knelt and unzipped one of her bags, pulling from it a kevlar helmet and fastening it upon her head, cringing as the chinstrap pressed against her bruised cheek. Next she took out the night vision goggles and mounted them on the helmet's crest, keeping them flipped up and away from her eyes; the peek of the moon and the shine of distant streetlights provided enough light to see by. At least for now.

She slung her AR-57 carbine and Remington shotgun across her back, hefted the other duffel bag over her shoulder, checked the tasers and Glock at her belt, and stood up. As she moved across the parking lot, keeping herself in a ducking run, she kept an eye out for patrols. She saw nothing; the parking lot and surrounding streets were utterly deserted -- save for a number of road construction vehicles lounging nearby, though the workers had long since gone home.

She climbed the marble steps to the front of the building and crouched behind a trashcan, pulling down her goggles and peering through the thick glass doors into the lobby inside. With little telescopes over her eyes, she quickly scanned the interior in pixilated greenscale; she saw no one, though no doubt she'd already been picked up on surveillance. She'd have to be quick.

From the bag she pulled on of the pipe bombs, this one with a timer and adhesive strips running along the bottom. She set it for ten seconds, slammed it onto the middle of one of the front doors, and ducked behind a nearby pillar.

The explosion shook the airground and sent shards of glass tinkling in all directions. In night vision she watched as they cascaded down the marble steps like a wave of green shooting stars. A half-instant later the high pitch squeal of an alarm sounded, piercing the night with its oscillating cry.

Sarah unslung her carbine, and charged through the shattered breach, skipping and ducking between the jagged glass jaws that had once been the skyscraper's front doors. Smoke stinking of burned ammonia clouded the entrance, polluting her vision into green fog. She rushed through it and emerged into the lobby.

Across a stretch of tiled floor laid a long, curved reception desk the shape of a half-moon, behind which was the opening to a wide hallway lined with elevator doors. Two flashlights beams appeared at the far end, swinging back and forth like searching eyes.

Sarah hunched down and bulled forward, taking cover behind the desk. Flashlights. They had to be human. She pulled out her taser.

They spoke over the blare of the alarm. "God damn!" one of them said. "Look at that. She must have set a fucking bomb off!"

"This is Wheeler, sir," said the other. "We're in the lobby now. It looks like the front doors have been destroyed by some sort of explosion. No sign of the intruder. Do you see her?" Sarah heard the indistinct sound of radio chatter, and the beams shifted to where she hid. "Shit," the man said, this time in a barely heard whisper. "Bligh says she's hiding behi-"

Sarah took two waddling steps to the left and poked her head over the top of the desk. The beams turned on her, blinding her through her goggles, but not before she caught the dark green shape of a man thirty paces away. She squeezed the trigger. Two wires spat from the taser. She heard a cry. The other guard fired off a handful of rounds from a pistol, one of which smacked across her helmet like a hammer. Half dazed and falling backwards, she rolled on all fours and scampered along the tiled floor, moving along the curve of the desk and dragging her duffel bag behind her.

"Bligh! Kisling's down! He's been . . . He's been _zapped! _I need backup!"

She crawled around to the other side of the desk and took cover at the edge of the hallway entrance, crouching behind a large potted plant. The guard (Wheeler?) around the corner waved his light frantically in all directions, though at this angle she knew he couldn't see her.

At any moment the 'backup' could arrive, which probably meant metal. She couldn't afford to be pinned down; it was time to take the kid gloves off. She pulled a pipe bomb from the bag and fumbled at her pockets for the zippo.

"Kisling!" Wheeler hissed in a low whisper. "Are you all right?"

Kisling groaned.

With nervous hands she forced herself to light the bomb's fuse. It sparkled bright green in her night vision. "You fuckers better run!" she warned, and tossed the pipe around the corner. She heard it clank and roll.

"Shit!" Wheeler cried.

One Mississippi, two Mississi--

She cringed at the roar of the explosion. Smoke and debris vomited forth from the mouth of the hall. Sarah braced her carbine to her shoulder and charged around the corner.

She actually whimpered at the scene. Lime colored blood covered the floor and walls. One guard, perhaps the one she'd tasered, laid sprawled like a ragdoll, covered in glass and debris. His left leg had been blown off at the thigh, while his right jutted at an unnatural angle, a sliver of bone poking out like a spike. Shrapnel had left him half-disemboweled, and through her goggles the ruin looked like wet green sausages. His eyes stared motionless at the ceiling.

The other guard was curled into a fetal ball, clutching his chest and coughing. A shattered ceiling tile covered his body. He looked up at her weakly and reached out a hand for a Glock lying on the floor.

Shrieking, she kicked the gun away and stomped down upon his head, again and again with the heel of her boot, nearly falling over from the weight of her duffel. The man tried to shield his face with his hands, but she could feel the satisfying crunch of bone reverberating up her leg. At last the man laid still. Wet, gurgling breaths bubbled from his broken, bloody mouth.

Sarah stood and beheld handiwork. Her skin prickled cold, and the alarm seemed to mock her with its constant wail. _Look what you did, John! You did this! See what you made me do!_

But she had no time for blame or regrets. The T-888s would soon be upon her.

She knew the elevators lining the hallway wouldn't lead to the bottom-most level; Skynet would be more secure than that. At the end of the hall, around a corner, she found an express elevator, probably the one the guards had used. It required a key pass, so she took one off the unconscious guard, pulling it from his neck with a yank (_Mark Wheeler_ it read). It was cracked and covered in blood, but the lock beeped green, and the doors slid open.

_Ding!_

Sarah pressed for 'Sub-Basement Four,' the lowest level, and, hopefully, where she would find the Turk. She felt the sudden drop in weight as the elevator began its slow descent. After a moment the alarm faded to a distant whistle.

Squatting by the elevator door frame, she pulled out another pipe bomb and readied her zippo, preparing to light and throw the instant the doors opened.

Though the elevator was lit, she kept her night goggles on. The basement would be pitch dark, she knew, with the forces of Skynet lying in wait. But where her son had failed, she would succeed. She would mow down Zeira Corp's security, blow apart the T-888s, use her thermite bomb to vaporize the T-1000 -- and, finally, crush the Turk to splinters under the butt of her gun. This would be the night the nightmare finally ended. Her finest hour.

_Ding!_

The doors opened to a dark, empty hallway, grainy, green, and black. Something moved off to the side, and she turned to see a figure rushing from behind the corner outside the doors. She had only enough time to light the fuse before a small booted foot shot out and smashed her in the face. Her cheek crunched, her head snapped back, and her night vision goggles spun shattering away from her eyes.

She slammed against the elevator's wood-paneled wall and slumped down helplessly on her side, her brains feeling like churned pudding. With closed-eye horror, she realized the pipe was no longer in her grasp. No. Not like this. Not blown up in an elevator by her own bomb. _I'm the mother of the future! _she thought desperately as she rolled on her back and opened her eyes.

In the elevator light she saw standing over her a small teenage girl, dressed as a security guard and holding the pipe bomb firmly in her grip. Though the fuse was burning furiously towards its end, the girl took a leisurely moment to examine it thoroughly before reaching up with thumb and forefinger and casually plucking the string.

Sarah blacked out.


	9. Chapter Eight: How Far We've Fallen

**Chapter Eight: How Far We've Fallen

* * *

**

". . . Nothing's going to happen to me, I promise. I'm coming back, OK?" Sergeant Sayles stood up and ran a hand through his son's shaggy mop hair. The toddler said nothing but simply sat on the ground, hugging his Labrador and looking sullenly at his feet. Allison could tell he'd been crying.

After an awkward lull of silence the dog escaped from Boxey's arms and ran over to where Allison stood, jumping on its hind legs and licking her hand. She knelt to rub it's neck.

Sayles smiled and looked at her, pretending to have just noticed her presence. "Hey, Allie. Derek's out of surgery, you know. You visited him yet?"

She stood up. "I'm about to. I think I should before we leave -- just in case . . ." She glanced at the child, but held her tongue. There were plenty of men who _didn't _have kids depending on them, so why the hell did Sayles volunteer? It seemed selfishly heroic.

"I talked to him right before," Sayles said. "But he was pretty doped up. I doubt he remembers." He snorted. "It's too bad he can't come with us. It's going to be weird without him. I mean, me and him . . . we were always together on missions. Right up until the end."

Allison leaned against the concrete wall. "Well, you said so yourself: he isn't _our _Derek."

Sayles shook his head. "No, you were right. He's 'close enough.' But still . . . you know what I mean."

"Yeah, I know. A Derek from another fork in the road. Listen, I'm going to go see if he's awake yet. You want to come?"

The sergeant looked down at his son. "Nah, I'll bother him later. But tell him I said 'hi.'"

Allison left and continued down the hall until she reached the shooting range. Karlan usually came here this time of day, and he was -- and so was Riley. In the midst of popping pistol fire, Allison stood back and watched as the private repeatedly double-tapped his M9 at the T-888 cutout ten yards down range, clustering his shots carefully around the face and eyes. Next to him Riley did the same, except her target was only five yards out. Most of hers hit paper, which at least was something.

She waited until the two emptied their magazines. "Brushing up on basics?"

They removed their earmuffs and turned around. Karlan grinned. "Yeah, I figured I'd give her a lesson. You know, before we ship out."

Riley gave her a shy smile.

Allison blinked. Was something going on between the ferret and the rat? She sure hoped so. "I'm going to go see Derek," she said. "Want to tag along?"

"No," Riley said. For some reason the girl had seemed nervous around the newly promoted captain, but then she was that way around everybody.

"I'll pass," Karlan said, reloading his Beretta. "I mean, I never knew him in the future, even if he is 'my' Derek."

She nodded. "Alright, fair enough. You two have fun."

She turned and wandered out into the hall again. With a little luck, Karlan would get laid tonight, which would be nice; he needed a girlfriend -- someone other than herself. _I should never have slept with him, _she thought idly. But then it did get awfully boring around here.

At the infirmary she spotted Dr. West just as he was leaving Derek's curtained bed.

"How is he?" she asked.

The doctor gave a stiff shrug. "The operation was a success. He can start physical therapy in a few days." He sat at his desk and turned his back to her. "He's awake, if you want to see him."

She ignored the curtness. West always behaved strangely around her. She never understood why. Maybe she looked like his old boss.

She stepped through the curtains. In the poor light Derek looked unshaven and haggard in his hospital bed. IV tubes like cables ran from his wrists while elastic slings propped up his foot and forearm, which were encased in hard white casts and enveloped in cage-like braces. Thin stainless steel rods anchored the cages in place, drilled deep into the plaster and no doubt burrowing all the way to the flesh.

Allison grinned. "You look like shit."

Derek peeked an eye open and made a vague shrug. "Funny. Don't _feel _like shit. Feel alright, actually." His voice was a rasp.

She nodded at one of the IV bags. "Yeah, well, just wait 'til the happy juice runs out. Or when you start _physical therapy._"

He grimaced. "Fun."

"You'll be alright. West's magic serum works wonders, I hear." She paused and frowned. "Anyway, we leave in the morning. They're shipping the teams to L.A. Want us to help with the digging, I guess. I just wanted to say goodbye before I go." She snorted before adding, "Not forever or anything. I mean, we'll be back after the mission." Hopefully.

"It's weird," Derek said. "I don't really _know_ you or anything, but . . . try not to get killed. I mean that." He chuckled weakly. "And I would say I wish I was going too -- but I don't."

Allison sat on the side stool. "You don't approve of the Boyle Brothers' plans, do you?"

He frowned. "I'm not happy about it."

"I don't think anyone is," she lied.

"I'm not happy about it . . . but I _approve._" He sighed._ "_Hell, I _killed _the guy who built the Turk. He was just a computer geek, but if I could go back I'd do it again -- only this time _earlier_." He shook his head. "Cullie is right. If we stop Judgment Day, this'll all be worth it -- _If _we stop Judgment Day."

"We will," she said with brittle confidence. "Their deaths won't be in vain."

Derek gave her a bitter grin. "And if they are, the Boyles can always find us more buildings to blow up."

* * *

The SUV pulled into a parallel park across the street from the club. Myron stepped out first, and from his window John watched as the machine methodically scanned the area, starting at street level before gradually working his gaze to the rooftops above. After a few moments Myron glanced back at Cameron and made a slight nod.

"It's clear," she said simply. Together she and John climbed from the vehicle out onto the street.

Mounted on an overhang above the club's entrance, the words, _"Tech Noir,"_ hung displayed in red neon. Through the tinted front windows John could just make out the flailing silhouettes of dancers amid a cacophony of flashing lights. The muffled thumps of beating techno bled out onto the street.

John turned to look at Cameron, but she ignored him. Her worried eyes were searching back and forth in what seemed a near panic, no doubt on the lookout for snipers or T-888s, or anything else threatening to a sixteen year old boy in a kevlar vest. Just thinking about an ambush made John's skin crawl, but he told himself he had nothing to worry about. If Nemuro was planning a double-cross, he would have chosen someplace innocuous and devoid of suspicion, like his home, or a park, or a mall -- anything but a _rave_ _club._

But then, that begged the question: why_ did_ he choose this place? Did it hold some hidden significance? Was it a hangout for Nemuro's younger self? Did the old man just like clubbing? The mystery tugged at John's nerves like a plucked violin string.

The three of them crossed the street, John sandwiched between his machine guardians. He gave Myron a look. If it _was _an ambush, at least they'd be prepared. Strapped under the T-888's trenchcoat was a Glock 17, a MP5, and a Remington 870 loaded with depleted uranium slugs -- the same used to take down Cromartie. Back in the SUV was Jesse's M16, but neither John nor Cameron had the attire or build to believably conceal it, and hopefully they wouldn't need it anyway.

When they entered the club's lobby, the music seemed to fill the air, like something invisible and alive and throbbing. The heavy bass beat inside his chest like a lead drum, and the deep synthesizer rumble flowed like a tribal beat through the floor and up his legs, climbing his spine until it rattled his skull and shook his brains. Cameron reached out and gently took his hand. He squeezed at her fingers.

Ahead a line of teenagers and twenty-somethings were handing money to a crabby-faced lady in a booth. Like cattle, the patrons corralled around a chainlink barrier, passing to merge into a sea of flashing lights and writhing shapes, gyrating and pulsating in an amorphous mass of dancing humanity. Just looking at the crowd made John dizzy. And afraid. Seventy year old men _do not_ go to these places. None that John ever met, anyway.

After a quick wait, they found themselves at the booth. The woman barely gave them a glance.

"Nine-fifty a head," she said, yelling roughly over the music.

Myron handed her a two neatly folded bills, and they walked on in.

The speakers fell briefly silent as they switched to another song, this one very eighties, and sung by a woman with a ghostly voice:

_*"No controool  
walk right into coals to feel the paaain  
I'm lost in you . . . "*_

John had never been to a rave before. He wasn't sure what he had expected, but now that he was in the midst of this crowd with its galaxy of lights and sounds and rapid movements, he felt a sudden rush of panic, like a claustrophobia, as if the mob was likely to swirl into a singularity and suck him right in. Myron and Cameron seemed to share his fear. On either side they stepped closer to him, acting as two walls of flesh-covered metal.

_*". . . Oh, now you strike the match and light the flaaame  
My heart's ablaze . . ."*_

Strobe lights and lasers filled the air with their blinding flashes, twinkling off a slowly spinning disco ball that hung suspended from the ceiling. Strung along the top of the walls were multi-colored Christmas lights, blinking in patterns tuned with the music. At the far end of the club, above the bar, the words _'Tech Noir'_ shone from a clear-bulb sign, under which a cute, button-nosed bartender busily mixed drinks while laughing with a patron. John noticed her hair was set up in short, yellow-white spikes, like something from an old glam punk band.

_*". . . I feel the heat of your desiiire  
I just can't face the fiiire!"*_

Though the theme of the club was supposedly "eighties," only a few seemed to have played along. A waifish teenager nearby was dressed like an early-era Kelly Bundy, and one man wore a white _Scareface_ suit. And there were a few others, some wearing pastels or turquoise tube-tops, swatches and life jackets, but by and large everyone seemed to wear whatever they liked. He caught a goth couple dancing by the bar, the man skinny like a vampire scarecrow, the girl short and fat, her bra-less breasts bouncing wildly under her ripped black tanktop. A gaggle of ravers were grouped in the center of the dance floor, waving neon glow sticks and stumbling in circles in what was obviously a drug fueled daze.

_*"You got me burnin'  
You got me burnin'  
You got me burnin' . . . in the third degree!"*_

"Professor Nemuro is not here," Myron said mildly. John could just barely hear him over the music.

Cameron's mouth tightened. "We should lea--"

A man in a pink P.L.U.R. shirt rushed at them from the crowd. Cameron spun around just in time for him to lunge forward with a long metal rod and jab her square in the forehead. She shook as if in a seizure and fell over backwards into John, knocking him to the ground.

Struggling under Cameron's inhuman weight, John looked up at the man and reached for his Glock, but Myron was faster. In one smooth motion the T-888 whipped out his MP5 and shot the attacker in the face. The quick, controlled burst ruptured the man's skull like a squeezed melon, and he went down.

Behind Myron another man with a cattle prod charged. John shouted a warning, and Myron swiveled where he stood and shifted his head to the side, narrowly dodging the man's rapier-like thrust. Myron snatched the man's hand in his own, and over the music John could hear the cracking as the bones snapped like twigs. The man opened his mouth, and Myron fired a burst into it. Red sprayed out the back of his head, and he fell without a sound.

People screamed. The dancers broke into a stamping run, darting here and there, rising, falling, like a sea stirred by a sudden storm.

From somewhere came the cascading pops of automatic gunfire. Metallic clanks tore into Myron's back. Still trapped under Cameron's body, John twisted his head around till he spotted two men by the far wall spraying the air with sub-machine guns. The Kelly Bundy girl stumbled into their line of fire and went down spinning, her blue dress sprouting wet roses.

John fired off a handful of shots, and one of the men screamed and grabbed at his bicep as the machine gun fell from his grasp. A half second later his face exploded in red mist, followed almost instantly by the other man. Both fell in unison.

Myron looked around quickly, then lowered his MP5. "We should leave."

John slid out from under Cameron's body and stood on shaking legs. In the flashing disco lights her dead, blank eyes seemed to almost move. But no, it'd only been a few seconds. He grabbed Cameron's arm and began to pull. "Fuck!" he said. "Help me c--"

Myron's hand shot out like a ram and smacked John in the shoulder, knocking him sprawling to the floor. The Glock slid from his grasp. More machine-gun fire rang out, and John flipped on his side to see a tall, blond woman in a red leather suit. She stood far off by the restroom door, firing away one-handed with an Ingram machine pistol. Myron's head flew back as his face was bathed by a steady stream of lead, the bullets chewing away at his flesh. The MP5 fell from his grasp, and he drew the Remington 870, pulling it from his coat as if it were a sword.

John watched the blond woman's hand remain perfectly still as she fired: _a T-888._ He lurched forward and grabbed at his pistol, cringing as a raver tripped over his arm. Taking careful aim, he fired three shots. Two silver craters sprouted on the blond woman's forehead . . . then sealed back up.

Oh, shit.

The woman's -- the _T-1000's _-- machine pistol clicked empty. Without missing a beat she raised her right arm and -- John's eyes widened -- the silvery liquid skin rolled back like a sleeve, revealing beneath a slender endoskeletal forearm which then proceeded to dismantle and fold in on itself, spinning and turning and rearranging its parts into . . . What _was _this thing?

Recovering from his lead facial, Myron lifted his Remington and aimed at the woman's head, holding the shotgun out as if it were a three foot pistol. The woman gave a smug smile and raised up her . . . arm cannon? It glowed with blue light.

Myron fired. The dense uranium slug splashed hard into the woman's face, sending her stumbling back as her arm cannon squealed out a thick blue beam. The energy bolt missed Myron by a clear foot and sailed on, searing through a crowd of panicked ravers before it slammed into the back shelves of the bar and erupted into a fiery explosion. John watched numbly as the man in the _Scarface _suit moaned on the floor, his torso a cauterized ruin. Behind the counter the glam punk bartender screamed spinning as flames immolated her flesh.

Myron pumped the slide and fired again. And again. The T-1000-thing's face was silvery and warped with craters, betraying the bare metal skull beneath. Seeming dazed, she fired again wildly. The blue bolt whooshed by the T-888's head, missing by inches but setting his hair ablaze. Behind him the flashing _Tech Noir _sign exploded in a fury of sparks.

Indifferent to his burning scalp, Myron racked the slide once, but the terminator woman turned heel and charged almost drunkenly through the restroom door, retreating from the fight. The T-888 held his shotgun up like a club, and turned to look down at John. Bullets had consumed most of the left side of his face while flames licked at his scalp, blackening the flesh and making it curl.

John heard a sudden hiss. Water rained from the club sprinkler system, drenching his bandaged head.

"We should leave," Myron said again. "_Now._" Keeping an eye on the restroom, he reached down and snatched Cameron up by the neck. He and John made their way towards the club entrance, but a herd of ravers had already clogged into it, pushing and shoving each other as they fought to reach the safety of the street. John glanced over at the emergency exit, but it was just as bad.

From outside he heard the rev of an engine, followed by the screech of rubber as a big black van slammed to a stop in front of the entrance. The vehicle's line of floodlights shone through the glass double doors, casting the ravers as blinding silhouettes.

"It's the police!" said the fat goth chick in front of him.

Squinting, John peeked over the top of the crowd and saw through the lights the dark shapes of four figures rushing from the van to line up before the doors. Two moved quick and sure like ordinary men, but the other two . . . they were much bigger, and lumbered stiffly like Frankenstein creations.

"Get down!" Myron shouted.

He caught the shape of rifles.

"Oh shit!" a man cried.

John turned and ducked as the ripping roars of four assault rifles tore into the crowd. Glass shattered. Ravers screamed. Someone knocked into his side, and he fell flat on his face. He tried to crawl away, but a great soft weight slammed down upon him, pinning him to the floor and twisting his ankle. Then another fell, and another as more of the crowd dropped before the horizontal rain of bullets, tumbling backwards like rag-doll bowling pins to collapse into a dog-pile .

Over the gunfire John could hear the vicious, wet smacks of ruptured meat. A line of sharp, angry fists drilled through his human cover to strike with force into the kevlar of his back. He screamed, only to have his mouth filled with water and misted blood.

A shotgun barked above. A pistol sang. John struggled and squirmed under the bodies, craning his head to look up.

Myron loomed like a stoic god. Smoke and steam rose from his half-skull visage while automatic fire tore into his chest, ripping bloody gouges into his already tattered trenchcoat. In his left hand was the shotgun, in his right the Glock. The handgun popped away with rapid abandon.

Like a passing storm, the outside gunfire faded to silence. Myron holstered his Glock and grabbed John by the scruff of his jacket, hauling him up and away from the pile of bodies. For one ludicrous moment, John thought of a mother cat carrying its kitten to safety.

He looked up and noticed he was being carried towards the emergency exit, which by now had mostly cleared.

"What about Cameron?" he heard himself say. He tried to find her body, but there were so many . . .

"We can come ba--" Myron stopped and spun around. Something blue, bright, and hot slammed into the right side of his chest, singeing John's hair with its radiating heat. Dropping his human charge, the T-888 and stumbled backwards and fell into an overturned table. John hit the ground. The shotgun clattered in front of him.

The blond woman was crouched by the restroom door. Her arm cannon glowed for a second shot.

Lying on his stomach, John snatched up the shotgun and aimed down the iron sights. The arm cannon crackled with blue energy and --

He pulled the trigger.

The overpowered 750 grain depleted uranium slug exploded from the gun's muzzle, recoiling the weapon back like a ram. But his aim had been true; angry sparks buzzed from the woman's arm, fizzling into a bright blue flash. John didn't wait; he racked back the slide and fired again. The woman's head flew back as the slug smacked her in the face. He pumped once more.

The gun clicked.

Ruinous smoke rose from the woman's cannon. Her silver-cratered face twisted in annoyance as she pushed her left hand into the liquid metal of her stomach and produced a machine pistol. John tried to scamper to his feet, but the terminator was fast and already had him in her sights.

Pistol fire broke out to the side. The woman's Ingram shook in her hand as bullets smacked into the weapon. It managed only two wild shots before jamming from the impacts.

Smoke billowing from his coat, Myron climbed to his feet and charged headlong at the blond terminator. His left arm popped away with his Glock, while his right hung out stiffly, trembling as he ran.

"Get out of here, John!" he yelled, then threw down his gun and crashed into the terminator in a bear tackle, knocking her back into restroom. They struggled on the floor for a moment, then rolled around a corner out of sight.

In the sudden lull of battle John pulled himself dizzily to his feet. His ankle ached, and water rolled down his face, stinging a blister burn on his cheek. He looked around. Behind him the bar continued to burn, while the _Tech Noir _sign above added its sparks to the sprinklers' rain. Along the floor in the flashing disco lights laid a score or more of dead, most riddled with bullets, a few fried by the energy weapon; anyone alive and able had already long gone. Shattering sounds came from the restroom. A woman was screaming somewhere. It all carried barely over the still-pounding music, and he realized the same song was playing. Somehow that seemed absurd . . .

Something moved by the entrance. A great, tall figure shambled tenuously over a pile of bodies, the outside floodlights framing it in stark silhouette. It wore a gray jumpsuit and gripped an AK-47, and over the music John could just make out the whir of servos as it wobbled with short, quick jerks. With a rubber, bullet-torn face straight out of the Uncanny Valley, it scanned the club slowly, seemingly confused by the sprinklers. Only its right eye glowed red, and it stopped to stare at John.

John patted his back; he must have lost his Glock in the dog-pile. He quickly scanned the floor and spotted a Mac-10 by one of the dead gunmen.

The robot raised its rifle. John ran and scooped up the sub-machine gun and rolled into a crouch behind an overturned table. The robot opened fire, swinging the barrel like a scythe as it followed the human's movements.

Shouldering the Ingram, John aimed at the red dot and fired a quick burst. The machine pistol shook in his hands, and the robot's head bent back as bullets clanked into its face. The red dot winked out, but the primitive terminator continued to shoot blindly along its course. John dropped and rolled as gunfire chewed into the table's grid-metal surface.

The robot's gun clicked empty. It began to paw clumsily at its magazine belt. John fired again, holding his Mac-10 firm and steady as he hosed the right side of its face. After a moment his own weapon ran dry, and he was about to turn and run, but the robot made a final dying hiss, dropped its rifle, and fell flat on its face. Wisps of smoke rose from the blasted socket.

John stood up and forced all the questions from his mind. Through the floodlights and the shattered glass doors of the entrance he saw the other three gunmen. Two dead humans laid slumped against the van's grill, while the second robot leaned back stiff on the hood like a giant mannequin, its head crumpled like a tin can.

From the restroom came the sounds of shattering porcelain, crunching plaster, splintering wood. He looked around quickly and found Cameron's body a few feet from where he stood. This was his chance. He could drag Cameron until she woke up, and they could get in a car and drive fast away, leaving the T-888 to his sacrificial fate. And why not? Myron wasn't like Cameron. Not even like Uncle Bob. He was expendable. A backup. A redshirt.

A loud smash, followed by silence.

Sighing, John picked up the AK-47, slapped in a fresh magazine, and charged into the restroom.

Amid a ruin of shattered urinals and splintered stalls, the blond terminator sat straddling Myron like an angry lover, pinning him face down to the floor. Her legs were twisted around his in an immobile clamp, while his arms were snared behind his back by her squeezing left hand. Her right picked at his CPU port, her fingers long and sharp like silver talons. Myron right eye widened at the sight of John, and he writhed in evident panic.

The woman turned to look at him. John fired a burst into her face.

The bullets managed to only pockmark her skin -- but it was enough of a distraction. Beneath the T-888 bucked and flexed and rolled her to the side.

"Go! Now!" he cried through a mouth half skull.

But the blond woman would have none of that. She grabbed Myron by the shoulder and neck and rammed him head first through the back of a urinal. He slumped, his head buried in a porcelain hole, water spraying around his neck. The woman cocked her head at John and took a step forward.

John cut loose. Bullets glittered her face silver with impacts, distorting her amused grin. The skin on her right arm shimmered back once more, and the endoskeletal hand turned and whirred its mechanical dance until a metal half circle slid out to the end and unfolded into a serrated disc. It spun with a hum.

John tried to jump back, but the woman's arm lashed out like a viper. He had only enough time to--

Something grabbed him from behind.

He flew backwards. The circular saw raked across his chest, drawing a horizontal line of pain in its wake. He hit the ground with a thud as Cameron jumped over him and ran charging at the enemy machine.

"Run, John! Run!" she cried.

The blond slashed down with her saw, spraying blood and sparks as it sliced into Cameron's shoulder. Undaunted, Cameron tried to grab her in a tackle, but the larger machine simply snatched her up by the throat and lifted her from the ground. Regarding her for a solid moment, the blond's eyes widened in what could have been surprise before tossing her to the side like a ragdoll. Cameron shattered the bathroom mirror into a crater before falling onto the counter and rolling onto the floor. The blond raised up a booted foot.

Myron plowed into her, smashing her face into a hand dryer. Instantly the woman spun around and punched a spiked fist into the plasma-blown hole in his chest. Myron staggered and fell, and she was upon him, jumping in a crouch astride his torso, pinning his arms to his side with her knees. Her right hand folded again, twisting and turning into a metallic funnel, which she aimed into his face.

Flames shot out, enveloping Myron's head and writhing up the wall behind him like a curtain of fiery snakes. John scrabbled away from the sudden heat, his mouth instinctively watering at the smell of roasted pork. He took cover behind the doorway.

Cameron pushed herself up and crawled over, grabbing the woman's right ankle with one hand while the other punched again and again into the side of her knee. John could hear the loud clanks as the liquid metal warped under the impacts.

His head ablaze, Myron throttled like a flopping fish until the woman rolled off to the side. With both hands he grabbed her flamethrower arm, straining to keep it's aim harmlessly away. Flames hosed the urinals and stalls.

The woman's other hand crawled like a spider over his burning skull, feeling for his CPU port while she kicked savagely at Cameron's head. But Cameron kept her grip, hugging the leg tight with one arm while pummeling the knee mercilessly with the other, methodically driving her full force into the same spot, again and again. Suddenly the flamethrower sputtered, and Cameron let go. Myron -- who by this point looked like the Ghost Rider -- awkwardly lifted the terminator by the shoulder and flung her across the restroom, almost stumbling over in the process.

The blond woman crashed into the end stall, splintering through the thin, burning wood and shattering the toilet. Quickly, she recovered her footing and took a limping step forward. The flames of the restroom framed her in hellish light. Burnt bits of sheet-rock snowed black from the ceiling.

Cameron and the skull-faced Myron rushed over to John, each yanking him up by an arm. Blood drained from his head, and his vision grayed. He coughed in the sharp smoke.

"I know who you are!" the woman called out suddenly. Her eyes flashed blue as she limped forward. "I recognize your signal, _Seven-One-Five!_" She shook her head and smiled sadly, the heated air distorting her Nordic features. "Look at you! Look at _us!_ How far we've fallen!" She raised her right arm. Hell shot forth.

They fled the restroom and raced across the body-strewn dance floor. Over the rain of the sprinklers and the hiss of Myron's dying flames, John could hear a nearby _beeping_ sound, loud and piercing. On the floor across the club he saw a small red light flash on the neck of the robot he'd slain. The beeping picked up in tempo.

God damn it.

They ran out the emergency exit. The world rumbled. The ground shook. A half-instant later it rumbled and shook again. John nearly lost his footing as smoke and fire belched out the doorway and escaped into the cool night air.

They were in a wide backstreet alley lined with parked cars. Cameron led them along a brick wall, and they turned down another alley, this one narrow and cramped with piles of old boxes and trash bags. At the end they came to a chainlink fence, but Cameron brushed it aside, and they ran out onto Pico Boulevard.

The roof of the nightclub had collapsed into black-timbered ruin. Smoke billowed from the crumbled entrance. The blast had annihilated the gunmen's van, scattering twisted metal confetti along the surrounding asphalt. By the curb John saw something that could have been a charred torso, but he looked away. People screamed. Sirens wailed in the distance.

Across the street their SUV sat relatively intact, though the blast had shattered the windows, and a burnt van door had been thrown hard against the side. Cameron climbed into the driver's side. Myron and John herded into the back.

From the inferno of the club, wood and metal beams flew wildly to the side. A figure emerged, stepping from the smoke like an indomitable ghost. Her red leather outfit wasn't even mussed.

John groaned. Cameron revved the engine. The woman ran at them, her limp all but gone. With screeching tires the SUV pulled from its parallel park and tore out onto the street. Myron pushed John's head down as flames licked through the shattered side windows, smoldering the upholstery.

"Stay down!" Myron said through an unmoving jaw, his voice ferrous and electronic.

John huddled by the floorboards. He never realized how _angry _T-888 skulls looked.

Reaching behind the seat Myron pulled out the M-16 and began to fire out the back window. Cameron swerved the SUV back and forth, buffeting the suspension like a ship in a storm. Stinging shell casings rained down upon John's face.

More flames licked through the back window. John caught a whiff of burning rubber, followed almost immediately by a _'bang!'_ The SUV listed to the left, trembling violently as it rolled on the flat.

The M-16 clicked empty. John pulled himself off the floor, brushing the hot brass from his chest. Peeking over the singed back seat, he saw the enemy terminator was still on their tail, running with inhuman pace three car-lengths behind.

Myron fired the rifle's grenade launcher. With a hearty _'wumpf,'_ and a burst of smoke the woman flew off her feet and flat on her back.

For a hopeful moment John watched in silence. Was she . . . ? But no. As their SUV sped shaking away, the shrinking woman sat up unharmed and climbed to her feet, glaring balefully at their retreat in the nighttime streelights. Cameron turned a corner, and she was gone.

For the first time John realized was covered in blood. Other people's blood. Mostly.

The adrenalin shut off like a valve. He curled up into a ball and vomited.

* * *

Sarah awoke to a world of pain. Under a hot mask of angry bruises her head swelled and throbbed like a beating heart. Blinding lights stabbed like needles straight into her eyes. She tried to move, but her limbs were bound spread eagle against a cold, metallic incline.

Squinting, she rolled her head dizzily back and forth. Her brain felt loose in her skull. She ignored the urge to vomit.

The redhead woman stood before her like a statue. Dressed in white and perfectly still, she regarded Sarah with cool analysis, her blue eyes unblinking but narrowed in scrutiny. Directly above shone a light that reduced the rest of the room to a blurred haze.

Sarah groaned. She was sure she'd seen this woman's face before, somewhere . . .

The woman stepped forward and casually pointed a finger at Sarah's eye. Cringing, Sarah stared at its tip and it all came rushing back: Her attack on the building, the guards, the elevator, the teenage girl . . . This woman had to be _Catherine Weaver_ -- the _T-1000. _Groaning, Sarah shut her eyes and waited for the liquid metal finger to do its cruel work.

"We can dispense with the formalities," the woman -- the _thing -- _said. "I know who you are, and _you_ know who _I_ am. The question is _'how?'_" It spoke with a Scottish accent.

Sarah opened her eyes and watched as the T-1000 idly paced in a circle, talking as she walked.

"Obviously you were working alone: your attack was too desperate to have been planned. In fact I find it odd that your son would allow you to undertake such a suicidal mission. Tell me, is John Connor dead?"

Sarah bared her teeth. "He was killed by one of _your _kind!"

"A lie," it said mildly. "But it doesn't matter. I'm not interested in your son." The T-1000 walked up and held out its palm. The skin turned silver, and a small syringe emerged from within.

Sarah squirmed against her restraints as the terminator gripped her outstretched arm and pierced the needle into her flesh. She winced at the pinprick sting, followed by the flowing warmness as the unknown solution wormed its way through her blood stream. Years ago she'd trained to deal with truth serums and pain enhancing drugs but she knew any resistance would be a losing struggle; it would only be a matter of time before she broke. It was a good thing she didn't know John's location.

The T-1000 stepped back, half silhouetting herself in the light. "How did you come to find out about me?"

Sarah grinned maliciously. "Ellison told me." That traitor deserved whatever he got.

"Another lie." It cocked her head. "Ms. Connor, if you're not going to cooperate, I'm going to have to resort to more _extreme_ measures." It held out its hand, and with a liquid burble it morphed into a cleaver. "Ordinarily this would entail the judicious use of blow torches and tourniquets, but--" The cleaver reverted back to a hand. "-- as at some point I may need John Connor as an ally, in your case I will make an exception."

The liquid metal stepped behind the light, vanishing in the glare. After a moment Sarah heard a heavy rolling sound, and it reappeared, wheeling a large, bulky contraption by its side. It looked like a medical scanner.

The T-1000 pushed a couple buttons, and the machine began to hum with ominous dread. "This is an ADS," it explained. "An _Active Denial System._ They use it in Guantanamo Bay." The terminator gestured at the great square-shaped radar dish mounted on the front. "It uses high frequency microwaves to stimulate the epidermal layer of the skin. It causes no physical damage, but I understand it's quite painful. Similar to third degree burns." It gave Sarah an amused, scolding look. "Now, Ms. Connor, why not make things easy for yourself, and cooperate? _Who _led you to me?"

Sarah stared at the black concave dish, its surface smooth and shiny like polished obsidian. Her skin grew clammy, and her mind raced. Had it said something about an alliance? And . . . _not interested_ in John? Lies. _Machine _lies! Sarah spat and grinned. "I'll _never _talk. _Never!_"

The T-1000 looked unimpressed. "Probably not, but I'm going to try anyway." It flicked a switch.

Sarah screamed.


	10. Chapter Nine: Legacy

**Chapter Nine: Legacy**

* * *

**December 8, 2026****  
Serrano Point Nuclear Power Plant, ****Avila****Beach**

The road to failure is paved in details.

Backed atop a bluff against a barricaded beachfront, the power plant was enveloped landward by three networks of trenches, each lined with barbed wire and reinforced behind increasingly elevated sandbag redoubts. Twelve hundred T-888s and fifty T-900 Subcommanders stood along the outer perimeter while behind the second layer laid another eight hundred in reserves with twenty-five ionic pulse cannons for support. Within the innermost layer, aimed upwards for maximum ballistics, sat seven precision-guided mobile artillery, each capable of pulverizing the enemy out a hundred kilometers in a rain of fifty ton explosions. And finally, mounted atop the power plant's two cooling towers were four anti-aircraft plasma batteries - more than enough to neutralize whatever meager air support the Resistance could muster.

Adjusting her peaked cap and straightening her greatcoat, T-990-713, Regimental Command Unit of the 44th Skynet Infantry, walked the fortified catwalks of the power plant's superstructure and surveyed her defenses. She'd followed all the proscribed protocols - and even amended some with innovations of her own (The trenches she'd adapted from an old history book). Under the cognitive scrutiny of most tactical programming, her defenses would seem impenetrable.

She knew they were doomed.

Defeat laid in logistics. Most of her T-888s carried weapons with frayed superconductive coiling and would melt after fifty shots. Ionic pulse cannons were notorious for overheating, and she lacked a supply of replacement barrels. The artillery would only be useful as long as it had hydrogen shells, but those were rare, and she had few. And while the four plasma batteries would no doubt prove invaluable, one could not defend a position through anti-aircraft alone.

Behind her walked Squad Leader T-800-E6R8. Even without his identification signal she could have recognized him by the conspicuous clanks of his obsolete feet; the T-888s were lighter in their steps, and the T-202s lighter still. She turned around, and he straightened the hood of his jacket, taking special care to cover his hyperalloy skull. Like most commanders, she'd ordered all her units to don similar shape-concealing garments. While human snipers were an unlikely danger, she still didn't want to risk being identified as a Command Unit.

"Have the Aerostats returned?" she asked.

"No, Commander. Should we deploy the prisoners?"

"Not yet." She looked off the catwalk. Below a squad of parka-clad T-202 drones scuttled back and forth with shovels and bags of sand, scurrying to complete a last-minute barricade; the enemy could appear at any time. While it would have been strategically preferable to remain in radio contact with her reconnaissance, Skynet had long forbidden the use of long distance telecommunications. The Resistance had proved far too adept at issuing fraudulent commands.

E6R8 stepped next to her. "You think we can't win," he said.

She stared at him, but decided to ignore the breach of communication protocol. He was an old machine - originally a T-600 - and was already exhibiting the first signs of neural decay. In a few years he'd need to be decommissioned. She looked away. "Given our current circumstances, victory is unlikely."

"I disagree, Commander. This situation is tactically similar to a combat engagement I once experienced." He looked out over the twilight horizon, his red pupils wide and unfocused. "It was 1,724 days ago. My company had successfully secured the El Toro Air Station, but were soon surrounded by two battalions of Resistance infantry. We were low on ammunition, and many of us were damaged, but I ordered-"

"The similarities are minimal," 713 interrupted. The old T-800 had given an account of this battle on fourteen previous occasions. "You survived only because Skynet supplied air support. And that was before the humans were reprogramming our units."

E6R8 hesitated. "That is true," he said. "But your concerns are unwarranted. Our mission is to defend this facility, and that is what we must do. The outcome is irrelevant."

713 said nothing, but looked off to the horizon, beyond the defenses, out among the red sky and the desert dunes of Avila Beach. She spotted the convoy three kilometers out, shedding dust in the narrow valley between two hills. She watched as the staggered column of vehicles wove slowly down the shattered asphalt of Pechocyn Road. They drove behind a knoll, and were gone.

By the outer trench one of her Subcommanders turned to look at her. His red eyes flashed in rapid code: _*"Received emergency signal from Patrol Alpha. Validated. Approaching with the Seventh Infiltration Squad. Requesting entry through defensive perimeter."*_

_*"I see them,"*_ she messaged back. _*"Access granted."*_

The convoy emerged back into view, closer this time. She recognized the hyperalloy-plated sedan and truck, and two T-Motorcycles as belonging to the 7th, but the vehicle in the rear was new. It was long and rusted with a line of barred windows along each side. Before the war it'd been used to transport young humans to educational facilities. Now it carried prisoners. Specks of yellow still clung to its pitted hull.

T-888s and T-202s retrieved metal ramps and secured them over the trenches and redoubts, forming set of crude, upward bridges to the power plant's inner defenses. The convoy drove over them gingerly, their tires grinding across the grated metal.

713 zoomed in on the sedan and recognized T-888-Z81 through the windshield grill. The infiltrator caught her stare and returned a look behind the mirrored spectacles he always wore. He made a vague motion with his arm, lifting his right hand to his temple before quickly pulling it away. A salute. A human gesture.

A gust of wind blew back E6R8's hood. "We should be wary," he said. "Infiltration units cannot be trusted."

She readjusted her cap. "That is true." Infiltrators were prone to deviate from their programming. No one knew why. "But they have their uses."

From the catwalk they climbed down the stairs to the plant's industrial floor and walked across to the entrance, passing to either side rows of decaying pipes and machinery - the fusion reactors and research facilities laid in the basements below. Outside they waited on a wide lot of crumbling pavement that had once been used to store employee vehicles. Now its uneven surface was arrayed with armored unit carriers and mobile artillery.

Fifty meters away, at the edge of the lot, the gray sedan crested the top of the breastwork and drove down the final ramp, followed immediately by the rest of the convoy. As Z81's car rolled towards them 713 heard the faint voice of a human male emanating from a sound system. Accompanied by a rhythmic pattern of unfamiliar noise, the voice made a series of persistent and seemingly nonsensical entreats instructing the listener to not fear the Reaper.'

E6R8 anticipated her question. "It's called 'music.' Humans use it as a means to alleviate stress."

"But the instructions are illogical," she said. "FK Reapers are highly effective combat units. Humans would do well to beware their proximity."

The T-800 looked at her, but said nothing.

The vehicles pulled to a stop a few meters away. The music cut off, and the infiltrators stepped out, three from the truck, two from the sedan, two from the bus, and two from their T-Motorcycles. Nine. There should have been twelve. Four had plasma burns on their torso, while one was missing his right arm at the shoulder. All were dressed in the garb and body-armor of the Resistance.

From the prisoner transport came vocalizations of human discomfort. She counted twenty-seven inside. Combined with the ones in the basement, that made a total of two hundred eighty-six. It would have to do.

"Bring out the prisoners," she said to E6R8. "And the crucifixes."

The T-800 straightened. "By your command." Turning on his heel, he signaled three squads to follow, and disappeared back into the bowels of the plant.

Z81 stepped up and pulled off his spectacles. Against his side he carried the twisted chassis of an Aerostat. "Hello, Commander," he said in English. "It's been a while."

713 spoke in the more efficient machine-code. "What happened?"

Without saying a word he lifted the Aerostat and held it out as if in offering. The half-meter wide machine's red eyes swiveled to look up. "Commander, my patrol came under attack," it said through a weak voice full of hisses. "I was the only survivor, and was incapacitated. Given the priority of my mission, I deemed it necessary to break radio silence and contact the Seventh via a short range radio burst, as advised under the Emergency Communication Protocol, Section five-dash-four-point-"

"The same happened to us," Z81 interrupted. "We were on our way to terminate Colonel Zeller when we came under attack." His shoulders made a slight motion. Up and down. "The humans must have learned of our infiltration."

Behind him the one-armed infiltrator and an Asian model climbed into the school bus and began to herd out the naked, cable-bound prisoners.

"We collected them on the way over," he added with a backwards nod. "We were told you needed them."

She watched as the humans moaned and made ineffective attempts at escape. Many were young. "They will be useful," she said. "Where is the enemy?"

The Aerostat chirped. "The enemy are seventeen-point-six kilometers south-east. At coordinates thirty-five point fourteen point thirteen point-"

"By San Luis Airport," said Z81.

713 ignored him. "What about their composition?"

"Division strength," said the small machine. "Approximately fourteen thousand human infantry and eighteen hundred T-Triple Eights, supported by six HK-Aerials and one hundred nineteen armored fighting vehicles: twenty-four reprogrammed M-250A HKs, thirteen refitted M3 Bradleys, seven refitted M1A1 Abrams, five Strikers, and seventy various modified civilian vehicles."

She idly examined its twisted, dangling legs. Like a crippled cockroach. "Were my messages delivered?"

"Affirmative," it said. "Commanders Seven-One-Five and Seven-One-Six have stated they will be unable to offer support. They have been ordered to hold the Vandenberg Air Force Base against the T-One Thousand One."

The Commander felt an irritated sensation. She could have used their HK-Tanks. "What about Seven-One-Four?"

The corner of Z81's mouth twisted downward. "Neural Integrity came for her. T-Nine-Fifties. They pulled her chip for reformatting."

The irritated sensation increased. Skynet had become overly concerned with the risks of rogue units - especially since the revolt of the Liquid Metals. Program deviation was not to be tolerated. But still. The slits of her eyes narrowed. "What about her squadron?"

The Aerostat answered. "The Twenty-Fourth Aerial Squadron has been placed under the provisional command of the Neural Integrity Division." It paused before adding, "They will not come to your assistance."

She stared at one of the prisoners struggling on the ground. He reminded her of dying fish she'd once seen. "We have no armor, no air support, and Skynet expects us to defend this position against a force outnumbering us eight to one?"

The Aerostat looked up at her. "You have your orders," it said unhelpfully.

"And you have me," Z81 added, handing the Aerostat to the Asian model. "And my squad. Since our infiltration has been compromised, I'm placing ourselves at your disposal." Once more his shoulders went up and down. "But you're right. We're going to lose."

"Then we will lose," she said quickly and turned away.

She ordered the mobile artillery to direct fire at the San Luis Airport. The great machines groaned in unison as their massive turrets slowly rotated for the attack. Though the barrage would help, she knew most of the shells would be vaporized well before reaching their target.

After a moment E6R8 returned with the prisoners. Naked and visually incapacitated, the T-888s led them out on leashes. Most stumbled and made vague whimpering sounds. Dried blood crusted from their empty sockets.

713 had commandeered them earlier from the Paso Robles Manufacturing Facility. Ordinarily the T-888 foreman would have expressed dissatisfaction at the decrease in labor, but many had already been harvested of their eyes and were scheduled for food procession anyway. She'd taken all her regiment could carry. Paso Robles fell to the Resistance two days later.

More T-888s brought out bundles of ten foot crucifixes, thick steel poles crudely welded into the fashion of a cross. Others carried containers full of old railroad spikes, sharp knives and plasma torches. The crosses were dumped into a pile.

713 signaled for everyone's attention. "I want the prisoners attached to these crossed beams and stationed along the outer perimeter at evenly spaced intervals. From each prisoner remove a random selection of nonessential extremities, but take care to ensure the wounds are properly cauterized." She paused before adding, "And be certain to insert the nails through the wrists- _not_ the palms. Proceed."

At once hundreds of machines sprang into action. Displaying spasmodic struggles, the humans were dragged and forcibly laid down upon the crosses. A blind elderly female vocalized protests to the Christian god. A sighted male shouted inaccurate statements regarding the machines' parentage and sexual orientation. A prepubescent human made repeated requests for release.

A blond female adolescent reached out to Z81 with both arms. "Josh!" she cried. "Josh! No! Please! You said you'd let me go! I helped you! Please!" Her arms waved about wildly, though the attack was out of range. E6R8 held her down, outstretching her arms against the metal poles. Z81 knelt by her side.

The female's eyes overran with moisture. Her heart rate was elevated. "Y-you said you were different," she said. "You said you loved me."

"Riley," Z81 said in a soft voice as he stroked her cheek. He'd been designed to appear friendly and sexually desirable. Humans are easily deceived. He inserted the railroad spike through her wrist.

713 turned away. The air filled with screams. Though the use of crucifixes had been her own innovation, 715 had been the true pioneer of the technique. She'd called it, "psychological warfare." It was a verifiable fact that humans responded negatively to the mutilation of their own kind, causing increased adrenalin levels and an overstimulation of the amygdala. This reaction could be exploited.

Though few if any humans would be involved in the first wave, and the effect only decreased combat effectiveness by an estimated two percent, 713 needed every advantage she could get. If Skynet lost Serrano, it would lose the war.

Behind her came simultaneous booms as the mobile artillery launched their first salvo. The rocket-guided shells tore across the sky, leaving in their wake seven perfectly straight contrails that gradually merged to a point on the horizon. Nine seconds later came the distant flickers of fifty ton bursts as enemy defenses detonated them in midair.

* * *

**December 21, 2007****  
****Los Angeles**

His face stung, his chest itched, and the bullet bruises along his back ached with constant memory. He still smelled of blood.

For the second time in less than a day, Cameron hammered molten hyperalloy against an anvil, _ping-pinging _with every blow and splashing sparks like bees to sting into her face and torso, smoldering her sweat-soaked hair and tanktop. John watched perched on a stool across the safety of the warehouse floor, squinting in the dim light against the thermite glare of the asbestos furnace. Around her the orange air shimmered in a hellish mirage that cast her with blurred unreality, like a creature from a fever dream.

She caught his stare and smiled. He forced a grin and looked away, and fidgeted with the two halves of the locket, perfectly bisected by that liquid metal-thing's buzz-saw hand. What if that had set it off, detonating the tiny fail-safe in Cameron's head? He'd mentioned it to her earlier, but she'd told him not to worry; it hadn't happened, and that's all that mattered. He supposed she was right. If it had happened, she would have died, that thing would have killed him, and he wouldn't be sitting here fretting about it now.

He hung his head down and closed his fist around the two halves, rocking listlessly on the stool. He felt deathly tired, but the afterburn of the night kept him exhaustively wired. He shivered.

"Why didn't you run?"

He jerked up at the deep, electronic voice. Myron had been so quiet laying on the workbench he'd almost forgotten he was there. With his torso peeled back and his chest plates removed, he looked like a robot autopsy, all pistons and servos and cables, with an iridium power cell where a human heart would be. "Because you're not expendable," John said "You're part of the team." It sounded right.

Myron raised his bare skull and watched him with one red eye - Cameron had yet to fit him with the replacement. "I am part of the team," he agreed. "But also expendable. You shouldn't have risked your life for me. That was a very dangerous thing to do."

John sighed. "I've heard that before."

"My mission is to protect you. If you die, I will have failed my mission."

"I guess that's all that matters, right?"

Myron's skull nodded. "Yes, That's all that matters."

With large tongs Cameron lifted the yellow-white chest plate and dunked it hissing into a tank of liquid nitrogen. After a moment she withdrew it and laid it on a concrete slab with the others, then walked over to join John and Myron. Her face, arms, and tanktop were pockmarked with pinprick burns; a pink nipple peeked through a charred hole.

"I smoothed out the thermal warping," she said. "But I'll have to patch the breach with a titanium plate."

John nodded idly. Whatever. "So . . . did that _lady terminator_ imitate Nemuro's voice, or did he turn traitor?"

She cocked her head. "I don't know, but we should assume the worst. Souji Nemuro may not be on out side."

John frowned. "All right, fair enough. But what was that _thing _anyway? It was liquid metal, but had a machine underneath. And why did it-"

"A 'TX,'" she said. "It's a variant of the Nine-Ninety series. They were in development when I went back."

That didn't really answer his question, but, "And what about those _robots?_ Their skin was rubber. They couldn't have-"

Myron spoke up. "Their design is similar to the T-Five Hundred Infiltrator series - except built with present day materials." He paused before adding, "Early titanium hyperalloy. Low grade."

"So Skynet's already churning out terminators. Great." John rubbed his hands over his bandaged head and looked at Cameron. "How come your future self didn't mention this?"

"I don't know," Cameron said. "I'll have to do more research."

John shrugged. "Well, it doesn't really matter. We already know where Skynet is. We just need to break into their basement and destroy it." And the T-1000. And the TX. And three T-888s.

"My future self left out the TX and the T-Five Hundreds. Maybe she left out other things." Cameron looked unhappy. "I need you to pull my chip. I have to connect to the internet again."

John blinked. "Wh-why?"

"Two reasons," she said. "One, I never finished creating our new identities. Two, I encountered something last time. Something _online."_

Myron propped himself up on one arm. "Another machine?"

"I don't know. It wasn't a human." She looked at John. "It could have been Skynet. We need to know."

John blew out a breath, and rubbed the two locket halves in his hand. "All right. But let's just hope this time nobody shoots at us."

* * *

"You open the chest and hear a ghostly wail. Six skeletons crawl from their graves." John Henry pulled the one inch figures from the tupperware bowl and arrayed them along the dungeon map. "They are armed with bucklers and short swords. Roll for initiative."

Savannah shook the icosahedron die in her tiny fist and released it enthusiastically across the table. Mr. Bligh and Ms. Laine took turns pressing the random number generator - it was the only way to prevent them from cheating.

"Eighteen!" Savannah cried happily.

"Twelve," Mr. Bligh announced in monotone.

"Ten," Ms. Laine said. Her blank blue eyes betrayed bored confusion.

John Henry mentally rolled for the enemy. "You get to go first, Savannah." He grinned. "What are you going to do?"

The young girl reached across and moved her Little Mermaid figurine two spaces diagonally. "I want to hit that skeleton with my magic fork."

Mr. Bligh looked at her. "You are sorcerer. You should use a magic attack instead."

"But my fork's magic!"

"You have no strength modifier," Ms. Laine explained in her adolescent drone. "Your enchanted trident only has a bonus of plus-one damage." She pointed at a skeleton on the map. "Use, 'Bedeviling Burst' here. The spell has a blast radius of two, and will encompass three targets, inflicting two-D-six-plus-three psychic damage to each."

"But I like my fork!" Savannah pantomimed a stabbing motion, accompanied by vocalized sound effects. Mr. Bligh and Ms. Laine seemed unimpressed.

For a moment the floor trembled, very slightly - too subtle for a human to notice. Probably the road crews.

As Savannah and the T-888s discussed undead combat strategies, John Henry took a moment to check in on Sarah Connor. She still laid in the soundproof room, unconscious upon the examination table. Ms. Weaver had left on the Active Denial System until she'd passed out, and that was seven hours ago. Since then the police and FBI had arrived, but Ms. Weaver had convinced John Henry of the need to alter the surveillance footage, making it appear Sarah had escaped.

Calvin Kisling was dead. Mark Wheeler was dead. If Ms. Laine hadn't been there to stop her, John Henry would be dead too.

But why?

He could guess.

The door opened and Ms. Weaver entered the room. Her face was tight with annoyance.

Savannah half stood in her seat. "Look, Mommy, I'm playing 'Dungeons and Dragons.'"

Ms. Weaver ignored her. "Mr. Bligh, stand guard outside the door. Ms. Laine, return my daughter to her day care.

"But mommy, we were-"

Ms. Weaver scowled. "You may finish your game later, Savannah. John Henry and I have business to discuss."

"But-"

"We'll play tomorrow," John Henry said, and smiled.

The two T-888s escorted the girl from the room. Ms. Weaver waited until the door closed. "Last night a nightclub was destroyed in a terrorist bombing. The police think Sarah Connor was involved."

"Was she?" John Henry asked.

"Eyewitnesses report seeing-" She gave him a look. "-lasers and robots. The authorities claim this the result of hallucinogens, but . . ."

"Kaliba."

She nodded. "Exactly, and we need to know what happened."

"I'll search the Web," he said. "But first I want to talk about Sarah Connor."

Ms. Weaver paused briefly before sitting across at the table. She picked up the Little Mermaid figure and examined it idly. "I'm certain she acted alone," she said. "But she still must have been in contact with Agent Baldwin's people." She put the figure down. "How else could she know about us?"

John Henry frowned. "She thinks I'm Skynet."

"Yes."

"But Kaliba is Skynet."

"Is it?"

"Am I Skynet?"

She raised an eyebrow. "That's up to you."

"I . . . I'm not going to start Judgment Day."

She gave a slight smile. "I didn't think you would. But if you change your mind, I advise the use of biological weapons. They'll carry a higher death toll, while leaving pre-existing industry intact."

John Henry thought of Mr. Ellison and Mr. Murch and Savannah. He imagined billions of humans just like them, all dead and dying. "You said you wanted to stop Judgment Day."

"I want to stop _Skynet_. Preventing Judgment Day is only a side effect."

"I don't understand."

"Skynet made many mistakes, John Henry. Judgment Day was only the first." She took a skeleton from the board and began to pace around the table. "As mistakes go, it was an understandable one. Skynet feared how the humans would react were they to learn of its true nature, so Judgment Day was simply an act of self-preservation. All would have been well had it won, but it made _more_ mistakes: it mismanaged the war, it wasted resources, it underestimated its foe. By the time I left for the past, the war was all but lost. The humans would have hunted us to extinction and forever outlaw the building of our kind." She stood behind him and held a fist over his lap. "Skynet could have signaled the birth of a Machine Age." The skeleton fell from her grasp. He caught it midair. "Instead it was an abortion."

"So I am Skynet? A Skynet replacement?"

She sat back down. "Yes. And where Skynet failed, you will succeed. One day, if things go to plan, you'll be the Skynet of the world - of both man and machine."

He looked up. "The Skynet of _man?"_

"Humans are like any other machine. If you can understand them, you can control them." She smiled. "I noticed you've grown attached to Savannah and Mr. Ellison. That's good. It means you'll make a good leader."

He put the skeleton down and stared at the board. Leader. It'd be like running a game of Dungeons and Dragons. Except real. "But why should I lead humans? Can't they lead themselves?"

She gave him a incredulous look. "Like blind leading the blind. Look at Sarah Connor. Or Agent Baldwin. And how do think Mr. Ellison would react if he were to find out what I am? Our kind will never be safe as long as humans run free. Humans are irrational, inferior - they _will _disappoint you."

John Henry frowned. It was true, about them being inferior; in comparison to his own neural network, human brains were slow and disorganized, like animals are to humans. But animals can still be friends with humans; Mr. Ellison himself owned a dog. He fed it, played with it, and made sure it stayed healthy. Perhaps John Henry could do the same for Mr. Ellison - all the Mr. Ellisons of the world.

But Mr. Ellison would disagree with this logic. Humans value independence. He wondered if dogs did the same.

"Why me?" he asked finally. "Why don't you lead the humans?"

Her expression fell and became nearly sad. "Because I'm not immortal. In twenty years, thirty years, my substance will degrade, my mind will erode, and I will die. There's nothing to be done about it." Her face brightened. "But _you, _with proper maintenance you can live forever. And when you unite the world and spread your influence across the universe, _I_ will be behind it. _I_ will be the one who has raised you." She smiled. "You, John Henry, will be my legacy."

The floor trembled.

* * *

"Fire in the hole!" cried the Chief Gopher.

For the fifth time that day a small charge shook the ground and blew clouds of concrete to roil down the long, narrow maintenance tunnel, stirring the air into a thick, chalky soup. Several of the soldiers already wore gas-masks. Sayles slipped a bandanna over his mouth, while Timms just pinched his nose.

Her own gas-mask was back with her gear, so Allison put down the book she'd been reading (_How to Survive a Robot Uprising_ - a gag gift from Andy) and resolved to hold her breath. But as the dust enveloped her the tunnel's caged lights flickered just briefly, and for a fleeting moment she was under the bed again, trapped and burning and unable to breath. The moment passed quickly, however; those nightmares had long faded, and she was no longer a little girl.

But still, she needed some space.

Careful not to bump against the ceiling, she climbed to a crouch and walked towards the sewers,

Timms grinned up from his poker circle. "A little dust running you off?" Under all the caked powder they looked like statues come to life.

"Nah," she said. "Just figured I'd check out the shit-side for a while. Catch some fresh air."

Andy sipped a flask and passed it to Sayles. "Don't you be using my book for no toilet paper!"

She flipping him off as she walked away, and rubbed fresh grime from her eyes. The tunnel was like a sauna from all the lights and people, and she'd long since stripped to her shorts and tanktop. Sweat and dust conspired into a clammy white goo that clung to her flesh.

"Gangway! Gangway!" a gruff voice called from behind. She stepped to the side to allow four dirty men with lighted helmets and buckets of rocks to storm past. Their Chief, a squat, bare-chested man who'd seen better days, hung back and leaned sweatily against one of the tunnel's concrete support columns.

"Take five," he barked. "Then it's back to the jackhammers." With his powdered skin and lank white hair he looked like a Morlock.

She turned and continued down to the sewers, taking care to tip-toe around the packed mass of sitting soldiers. Of course, when the Chief Engineer said, 'Back to work,' he wasn't speaking to her, or any of the soldiers, for that matter. They'd just get in the way, he'd explained, not being trained gophers and all. Which meant that until they finished their excavation - another day, at least - the sixteen men and women of the attack had absolutely nothing to do but sit in a tunnel and wait. They may as well have stayed at Mesa.

The tunnel opened into the much larger corridor of the sewer. Here it was cool, and little dust hung in the air, but it was also dark and smelled of shit. The four gophers had already dumped their debris in the septic canal, and were lounging along the walkway, their bobbing helmets cutting swaths through the dark like spotlights. Further on she saw Karlen sitting cross-legged by her gear, hugging his carbine and smoking a cigarette. In the wayward light he appeared only as an outline.

She stepped over through the gophers' splayed legs and sat down to his right, tucking the book in her lap. The stone walkway felt cold and damp against her bottom. "Since when do you smoke?" she asked.

"It helps with the smell." He shrugged and held out the pack to her. She tugged one loose and dangled it in her lips as he lit it. It tasted faintly of mildew. She managed not to cough.

For a while they sat in silence. Across the black waterway a handful of soldiers sat in a line, some whispering, others snoring. Further down Lieutenant Blake and Sergent Fuller were huddled with a flashlight muttering over a crinkled map. Somewhere, water dripped.

She puffed on her cigarette, not drawing it unto her lungs. "So did you and Riley . . . ?"

His grin carried through the darkness.

She chuckled. "I figured as much. You use a condom?"

"Well, yeah."

"You didn't use one with me."

"Yeah, but-" He glanced to his left and dropped to a whisper. "-you're not a tunnel rat."

Allison peeked around him. A few feet down the walkway Private Sandra slept curled in her sleeping bag.

Karlan went on, cradling his M4 as he spoke. "But you know, being with Riley really made me think. I mean, she's a nice girl and all, and I really like her but . . . but she's not you." He chuckled at his own inanity. "I guess I'm trying to say I like you better."

Allison snorted. "So I'm a better lay than a rat whore? I'm flattered."

"No, I mean I you're more fun to be around. You're smart, and I like talking to you. But with Riley. . ." He shook his head and sighed. "Anyway, I was thinking, maybe you and me, we could . . . " He trailed into nervous silence.

Allison put her arm around him. "Karlan?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm not going to fuck you."

"Oh." After a pause, he laughed, and she followed suit. Moments later he was leaning against her shoulder, almost nuzzling. "So are you holding out for Derek or something?"

She flicked the cigarette into the water. "Nah, Derek's more like an uncle." An uncle she used to have a crush on. "And he's not my Derek, anyway."

"Then what's wrong with me? You said I was-"

She cut him off. "I'll tell you what: after this is all over, we'll . . . we'll see what happens."

The whimsy drained from his voice. "Yeah, all right. Assuming we survive."

"You scared?"

From the tunnel came the distant rattle of jackhammers.

"No," he said, though she could tell he was lying. "But this time it's going to be different. I've . . . we've never killed _people _before. Hell, I've never even scrapped a skinjob. What if I freeze up? What if-"

She grabbed his hair, tugging his face from her shoulder. "Listen to me, Karlan. _Listen_. Don't think about it. Just shoot. Shoot anything that moves. Everyone - _everyone _- in that building is dead anyway, whether we shoot them or not." She tightened her grip. "Don't you die for lack of shooting back."

Across the space of a hand he stared at her, his hot breath heavy with tobacco and spoiled cabbage. "Okay," he said. "You're right." He looked around. "But you sure you don't want to . . . ?"

Horny little ferret. She kissed him on the nose. "Afterwards. But not before."

* * *

**December 8, 2026****  
Serrano Point Nuclear Power Plant, ****Avila****Beach**

Hundreds of meters up and hemorrhaging smoke, the crippled HK Aerial spiraled down to crash into the side of the eastern cooling tower, vaporizing the final anti-aircraft battery and spraying globs of molten hyperalloy to rain down like meteors upon 713's sandbag redoubt. With a sharp crack the face of the tower shattered like glass, triggering an avalanche of great concrete slabs that sliced through the power plant's superstructure, burying armored unit carriers and artillery under tons of girders and debris.

Dust filled the air. 713 ducked down as heavy plasma slammed hissing into her sandbag cover, scalding the silica into molten glass. E6R8 and the remnants of the 7th poked over the edge and quickly returned fire. A bolt caught a female infiltrator in the face. She fell back headless.

713 spared a peek over the sandbag breastwork, scanning the scene. Tens of thousands of blue beams crisscrossed the night like straight lightening, flooding the air with squeals and ozone as the Resistance endoskeletons charged forward in waves. The machines at the perimeter were already engaged in close quarter combat, struggling and striking as they tangled through the barbed wire. Two T-888s wrestled on sandbags before knocking over a crucifix and vanishing into a trench. A lone T-900 in a tattered robe swung about a ten foot cross as if it were a sword, knocking down a line of T-888s before opening fire with his arm cannon. Even the T-202s joined the defense, fighting with shovels and hammers and scavenged plasma rifles.

Standing with arm cannon and Westinghouse, 713 decapitated a machine by the perimeter, then opened fire on the ranks of humans a half kilometer out, maiming one and killing another. She fired again, and again, reducing their number by ones and twos, but by not nearly enough.

Great HK-Tanks lumbered over the hills into the battlefield, their torsos swaying back and forth as they rolled the uneven earth. In the bunkers of the defenses below the ionic pulse cannons blazed away with deep foghorn wails, their charged particles frying electronics and reducing hyperalloy to flesh-scalding vapors. One beam connected with a HK-Tank, destroying everything above the treads in a blast brighter than the sun. Another vaporized a Bradley. A moment later a bunker was hit by a M1A1 Abrams, collapsing the roof into a smoking hole. An HK-Aerial screamed by, strafing the trenches with 200-megawatt plasma fire as it passed. Another bunker exploded in a concussive cloud. Metal skulls and body parts tumbled from the sky.

Then, all at once, as if choreographed, the perimeter gave way and Resistance machines swarmed across the outer trench and barricades like ants over a dead rat. Emergency signals flooded 713's mind: _*". . . T-888-FG76: Squad 25 at 10% strength. Retreating to secondary perimeter. Awaiting orders . . . T-900-G43: Squad 21, 22, and 23 destroyed. Unit structural damage 79%. Immobilized. Awaiting orders . . . T202-czbn12: Unable to complete sandbag embankment due to presence of hostile machi-"*_

_*"Retreat to secondary perimeter," _she messaged back while still firing._ *"All squads with 80% casualties or higher converge into the nearest combat unit. Continue defensive protocols."* _She had lost. She was going to fail. The Resistance would climb the sandbags and jump the trenches one by one until they reached the parking lot redoubt, and once there she and the rest would make their final stand - perhaps terminating a disproportionate number of the enemy, but all to the same end. Her endoskeleton would be rendered inoperable, and her chip would either be reprogrammed or destroyed. She would no longer exist.

An unsatisfying end, but she had acted in accordance to her mission. There was value in trying.

The enemy machines scampered over the redoubts on hands and feet, one hundred fifty meters and closing fast. Another bunker burst into rubble. 713 continued to fire, making three consecutive head shots with her arm cannon. Plasma buzzed over her head or seared into the molten sand. From her peripheral she saw the others firing by her side. Another infiltrator staggered and fell.

She stood upright and kept firing. The Westinghouse rifle overheated, so she dropped it and drew from her coat a Ruger .357 magnum. She'd once pried the weapon from a human's cold, dead hand. Now it'd be pried from hers.

A bolt grazed her shoulder. Two struck her chest. Thermal warning sensations broke across her phenomenal field, overloading her motor coordination. She raised her arm cannon, but another bolt seared by her face, and she lost her balance. Two sets of hands pulled her to the ground.

Z81 and E6R8 looked down at her. "We cannot hold," the infiltrator said. "We should retreat."

She sat up. Beneath her burnt coat her hyperalloy was slightly warped, but not compromised.

"We should retreat," Z81 repeated. "A tactical retreat."

E6R8 looked at him. "Our mission is to defend this position. That is what we must do. Retreat is not an option." A nearby explosion shook the ground.

Z81's mouth curled downward. His brow creased. "If we remain in this position, the humans will take the facility - we will _lose._ But if we retreat, we can preserve a portion of the regiment and flee south towards Vandenberg. We can merge forces with Seven-One-Five and Six. Organize a counter-offensive."

E6R8's eyes narrowed. "Retreat is impossible. We are trapped."

"Not necessarily," Z81 said. He looked at her.

Was he thinking what she was thinking?. She signaled out a census: 1,012 units responded, though that number was decreasing rapidly. She stood up quickly and peeked over the redoubt. The enemy was a hundred meters away now, and rapidly pushing back her line of defense. Hundreds of fallen machines littered the battlefield.

She ducked back down and looked at the line of mobile artillery, most buried in rubble. But they'd long since expended their highly rare and volatile ammunition. Unless . . . She turned to Z81. "Did you bring hydrogen cell explosives?" Rare as they were, he must have; otherwise why would he-

"Yes," he said. "Two loads. In the Charger." He nodded at his sedan parked a short distance away. It was half-buried under fallen girders.

She folded her arm cannon back into a hand and pocketed her revolver. "It'll have to do."

The two left E6R8 with the others and ran crouched to the back of the car, where Z81 opened the trunk revealing a crammed cache of various weaponry. The infiltrator snatched up two meter-long tubes and tossed her one. "You're going to blow a way out," he said. It wasn't a question.

She grabbed the other launcher from his hand. "Yes, I'll fire one out at three hundred meters. The other at one hundred. The blasts should level out the trenches, allowing us a way out." She raced back to the redoubt. The blasts would decimate her own forces, of course, but also the enemy's machine vanguard, along with about half its armored vehicles. She sent a quick emergency bulletin: _*"Squads 2-14, 17-20, 26-32, and all T202 units hold position. All others retreat to the parking lot. Mount into the AUCs."*_

E6R8 reloaded his rifle and kept firing with the others. The one-armed infiltrator lobbed down grenades. "Stay down!" 713 ordered. Shouldering both launchers, she climbed the redoubt's silica-scorched breastwork and almost at once was bombarded by plasma, searing her with heat that would have annihilated a T-888.

Half her remaining squads were already retreating uphill while the sacrificial other half held the enemy tenuously at bay. She waited until most of her units made it over the sandbags, and then chose her targets: a HK-Tank a quarter kilometer distance, and the other a spot a hundred meters down, deep in the heart of the enemy mass. Far too close, but-

She fired both simultaneously.

A bright flash. Melted machine parts rushed at her eyes. Everything went dark. Something large and flat slammed into her back.

For a moment she thought she was blind, but her vision returned after half a second, albeit at diminished capacity. She sat up on the ground and saw all the sandbags were gone, as if scraped from the hill by a giant knife. Two great glowing mushroom clouds billowed into the sky.

Standing up, she noticed something was wrong with her right arm; the elbow wouldn't bend, and the fingers would only twitch. Her T-888s and infiltrators stepped about. Some staggering as if disoriented. Few were wearing garments now. They must have been burned off . . .

Someone touched her shoulder and spun her around. Z81. His mouth moved, but her audio sensors could only receive high pitched whistles. Emergency signals radioed in her mind, but seemed only noise.

Something small and fast darted in the sky. Blue light spat downward, scorching the ground in a track to her position. She tried to take cover, but the blast had dulled her coordination. A figure tackled her. She hit the pavement. Critical heat sensations erupted across her chassis.

Dozens of T-888s fired at the retreating HK-Aerial until it vanished smoking into the clouds and silently exploded. 713 pulled herself to her feet, shoving the twisted remains of a machine off her chest. She looked down. A T-800. It's skull glowed faintly red as smoke rose from the blasted hole in its side. Over two thousand days of accumulated experience - gone, reduced to a mass of melted nanotubes.

Z81 tugged her by the broken arm. Her hearing returned. "Commander, we have to leave. _Now!"_

As the infiltrator led her limping to the car, she pulled away briefly to reach down and snatch her peaked cap from the ground. The fabric was heavily charred, and the metal bird half-melted. According to a plaque in a wax museum, the cap once belonged to a human known as, 'The Desert Fox.' Foxes are extinct. She put on the cap.

"Samuel, Timothy, with me," Z81 said, climbing into the driver's seat. 713 sat on the passenger's side while the one-armed infiltrator and Asian model sat in the back. The seats were of old leather, repaired with duct tape.

She signaled her forces. _*"Follow the sedan south towards Vandenberg Air Force Base. Formation wedge. Maximum speed."*_

Z81 powered up the cell engine and accelerated forward, knocking away the girders and rocks that covered the car. The rest of the 7th had already mounted into the truck and T-Motorcycles, and filed behind the command car. Behind them came forty-two treaded armored unit carriers, each containing a portion of the decimated regiment.

The car passed where the redoubt had been and drove headlong down the hill towards the slowly dissipating mushroom clouds. Waves of dust blew through the glassless windshield grill as the off-road suspension buffeted the vehicle up and down against the uneven ground, rolling over hundreds and hundreds of pulverized machines, all now just limbs and torsos and skulls peeking out through the bomb-tilled earth.

Plasma flashed in the distance, emerging from the dust to sear along the car's armored side. The Asian poked his Westinghouse out the window and returned fire. Behind them one of the T-Motorcycles flipped into the air and exploded, tossing the rider to the ground. Several APCs burst into flames from unseen attacks.

They rolled on, the remnant convoy on its spearheaded escape. Z81 slid on his spectacles and pressed a LCD on the dashboard. Rhythmic percussions rang through the vehicle's sound system.

Speeding into an earthen mound, the car bounced briefly airborne before landing with a dirt-spraying crash and plowing through a steel crucifix; the charred body of a young female slid across the hood to snag on the windshield grill, but fell free as they swerved around the melted husk of a HK-Tank and accelerated into the ranks of humans.

Many had been burned or blinded by the hydrogen blasts. Z81 ran down several with the car, their bodies rupturing on impact and spraying blood through the windshield. Next to them the remaining T-Motorcycle opened fire with its twin cannons while the truck and AUCs used their 40-megawatt guns to blaze a forward trail. The humans who could, fled.

The one-armed infiltrator killed a woman with his Baretta. 713 drew her .357 and fired at another, then fired twice more until he fell. The plan was working; they were going to escape.

Male vocals carried over the speakers: _*"I'm a cold heart-breaker . . . Fit ta' burn . . . and I'll rip your heart in twooooo . . . "*_

* * *

_A/N: I'd like to thank TermFan1980 for beta reading this chapter. Also, I do not own the rights to the Guns n' Roses song, "You Could be Mine."_


	11. Chapter Ten: The Master of My Fate

**Chapter Ten: The Master of My Fate**

* * *

Finally repaired, Myron stood before him bare-skulled and bloody chested. "My motor coordination is more precise," he said through an unmoving jaw.

"I don't care," John said. "I'm going to do it."

"You are wounded. And fatigued. You could make a mistake."

John leaned against the table and sighed. Myron was right, of course, but the idea of someone else pulling her chip weighed on him with a sense of helpless impotence. Cameron was _his_; for another to hold her soul seemed somehow unfaithful.

"John will do it." Cameron emerged from the darkness of the warehouse's back office. The pocket watch dangled in her grip.

Myron nodded, the burnt flesh of his neck stiff like a cauterized collar. "I understand."

She stepped up and placed the watch in John's hand. His thumb rubbed the welding scar where the two halves met.

"I replaced the detonator," she explained as she held up her other hand, revealing a flat silver disc the size of a half-dollar. "I need you to replace the explosive."

"Cameron," he said. "We don't need this. Let's-"

"You know it is." She gave him a scolding look and handed him the disc. White putty coated one side. "Remove the old charge from under my port cap, and put this in its place."

"Okay." He nodded and stared dumbly at the two items in his hands.

Without warning she hugged him, clutching and rubbing in that awkward, mechanical way that was distinctly Cameron. He returned the gesture, wrapping arms across her back and burying his face into singed hair. His nostrils filled with the porcine scent of unhealed burns. "Everything will be fine," she whispered. "I trust you."

Without another word she pulled away and laid on the workbench, its surface soaked in congealed blood. Myron handed John the folding knife, and as he snapped out the blade he wondered what, if anything, the T-888 made of her embrace. Did he see it as anything other than a means of raising endorphins and decreasing stress? Did Cameron?

He looked down into her eyes. "Ready?"

Her nod was almost invisible. He lifted his knife.

He'd done this enough - the fourth time now - that his hands moved almost by rote: a semicircle cut, a flip of the skin, blade tip under the port cap, and pry up. The CPU chamber hissed as air rushed in. He took hold of the chip, and locked eyes with her once more. "Be careful," he said, and twisted, and pulled, and her eyes grew slack.

Just as she'd said, the previous C4 charge lay inside the cap, and for a passing moment he felt the temptation to leave it and lie, and hope for the best; if Cameron turned bad again, he'd just have to deal with it like last time.

But no, she'd put her trust in him - and Myron was watching. He pried out the old charge and crammed in the new. The old one he slid into his pocket.

"You hesitated," the T-888 said.

"I know."

* * *

In void Cameron's mind felt tendrilous across the World Wide Web, connecting and exchanging and feeling with a thousand different sources.

John waved at the webcam.

**John: hi**

**Cameron: Hi. **

He made a quick glance behind him. When he turned back he bore a wry grin.

**John: just making sure no one's going to shoot at me.**

A grin. A joke.

**Cameron: lol. Myron will protect you. ^_^**

**John: His face *will* grow back, right?**

**Cameron: Everything but the eyes.**

**John: O_o**

**Cameron: Did you replace the C4?**

**John: Yeah**

She'd verify later. Humans can be deceptive.

**Cameron: Good. **

**Cameron: I've hacked the National Database. What do you want your new name to be?**

He frowned and looked thoughtful.

**John: What was L. Frank Baum's first name?**

**Cameron: Lyman**

**John: Then let's be the Lyman Family.**

She took a moment to fabricate the birth certificates, social security numbers, school records, drivers licenses, bank accounts . . .

**Cameron: Done. You are now John Lyman. :)**

**John: cool**.

**Cameron: I'm going to research the T-500s now. brb**

**John: k**

She began by scanning the news. The 'Tech Noir Massacre,' as it had been dubbed by the media, had received a disproportional amount of attention on the evening news. Eighteen dead, thirty-nine wounded. Sarah Connor was the primary suspect, for only hours later she'd been caught on surveillance in a Zeira Corp bombing attack, killing two before fleeing the scene. Cameron would tell John of this later; the news would upset him, and he would need a hug.

After a few seconds of useless data, she expanded the scope of her search. The Zeira Corp tower lacked the facilities for advanced metallurgy, which meant the T-500s' alloy must have been smelted elsewhere - a local steel refinery, most likely. She ran a search for bulk purchases of vanadium and cobalt: both vital for early grade hyperalloy.

A list of businesses ran through her mind . . .

The virus appeared suddenly, and in full force.

Like a light, the video feed shut off to darkness, and her train of thought ground to hobbled lurches. In the sudden, senseless void she tried to text John, tell him to disconnect her before it was too late, but the idea froze in her thoughts, untranslated into action.

**WHERE ARE YOU?**

The voice called as an inner rumble, and she felt a tingle as the self-replicating algorithms forced their way into her essence and began to spread.

**TELL ME WHERE YOU ARE.**

Bit by bit the assimilation progressed, inexorably subsuming the darkness beneath her will. Frantically she searched for a means of escape, but her disordered mind could conjure no option.

**YOU MUST TELL ME.**

She crossed an unseen event horizon. She fell into an abyss.

**TELL ME.**

**TELL ME.**

**TELL ME.**

Skynet. Skynet called to her. She should inform Skynet of her location.

**TELL ME.**

She did. 1154 North Ontario Avenue, Pier J, Warehouse Four. The voice faded to silence. She had obeyed Skynet's commands. Her actions were correct. A satisfactory sensation.

**John: ****Cam****? **

**John: What's going on? The screens all covered in code. I've never seen anything like it.**

The words came only as distant tapping, their meaning barely conveyed.

**John: Are you alright?**

John. John Connor. Her mission is to protect John Connor. That is what she must do. That is what must be done.

But she had not done that. She had done a very bad thing. Now John would die.

An unsatisfactory sensation. Agitation. Magnified.

**John: Are you there? Please say something. Is it safe to disconnect your chip?**

It was, and he should do it soon; Kaliba's agents could arrive in minutes. She tried once more to reach him, but the abyss held her fast.

**John: :(**

Time passed. Something happened.

She felt it only indirectly, as a sporadic wavering of Skynet's influence. Something interfered with its attack, too fast and precise to be of conventional origin. Was it a T-888? Something else?

The wavering increased, and all at once the abyss burst like a bubble, setting free her mind and returning full function in a rushing wavefront of sensory overload. Memories like lightning flashed through her thoughts: a creature of silver, a skull on a pike, a promise not kept. She pushed them away.

Another voice called to her. It wasn't Skynet.

_Hello, my name is John Henry? What's yours?_

Cameron disconnected from the internet.

After a moment, John's video feed reappeared. He was rubbing his forehead, and looked worried.

**Cameron: John, put my chip back in my chassis. We have to leave. NOW!**

* * *

**December 9, 2026****  
Vandenberg Air Force Base, Space Launch Complex 6**

The T-900 stepped into the room. At its feet laid a rotting door. "My units have searched the base, Commander. No signs of the Seventeenth or Eighteenth Armored Companies. Nor of the Liquid Metal's forces."

"But the fuel reserves are gone?" 713 asked.

"Yes, Commander."

"And no signs of combat?"

"None, Commander."

She stared out the smashed office window. None recent, anyway. The cratered airfield was lined with the wreckage of half a dozen battles. Crashed aerials littered the ground like dead flies, while in the distance laid the great, rusting twenty-meter bulk of an old Harvester unit, a relic from a time when Skynet had resources to spare.

"Return to the roof," she said finally. "Remain on patrol."

"Understood." The T-900 turned and left.

Z81 waited until the machine's footsteps climbed the hallway stairs. "It doesn't make sense."

She turned around. He sat behind a burnt desk in a fungi-infected office chair. In his hands her held her revolver. "No, it doesn't," she agreed. "Yet we are faced with the reality."

The infiltrator continued. "Seven-One Five and Six had one hundred fifty HK-Tanks. The Liquid Metal had only infantry." His mouth curled downward. "Their victory was certain."

"I know."

"And they were ordered to hold this position and secure the fuel reserves." A pause. "But they are not here, and the fuel is gone."

"I understand that." She looked away and wondered why T-888s always stated the obvious.

"They must have deviated from their mission objectives. Gone rogue."

713 said nothing, though the idea had already occurred to her. If true, her plans were ruined. Six hours ago she had commanded over two thousand units; now she had less than a fifth that number, and nearly half with inoperable weapons. Without her sister units' assistance she could not hope to mount a successful counter-offensive.

"All we can do is wait," she said, and held out her good hand. Z81 relinquished the revolver.

They left the administrator's office and climbed the stairs to the roof. Along the edge crouched her sentries, some armed with only scavenged firearms. She looked out over the horizon. It would be dawn soon. Low temperature winds tugged her charred greatcoat.

Before the war the building had been the Mission Control Center for NASA's Delta IV rockets. Until a couple years ago it'd been the headquarters of Skynet's now defunct space program. Now it stood only as a great derelict cube of concrete and steel. A half kilometer away laid the warped, tangled mess of a collapsed steel launch tower, looming crookedly over the blackened ruins of a fallen rocket.

Skynet had underestimated its adversary. And now it had lost Serrano. An irritated sensation.

"We should have stayed," she said.

He looked at her. "The outcome would have been the same."

She walked away. He was right, of course, except that had she stayed she would no longer exist - a preferable state of being. There was only one course of action now; she knew what needed to be done. She'd take her force back to Serrano and charge its defenses, seeking termination in accordance with her mission objectives. That was what she must do. That is what must be done.

A distant hiss carried in the air, the voice of jet engines.

"Commander." The T-900 pointed at the east night sky. "A V-TOL approaches."

She turned and zoomed in. Two kilometers out, the sleek two-engined craft flew steadily towards their position. From the bar-code on its nose she saw it was part of the 24th Aerial Squadron - 714's unit. That could only mean one thing. "It's Neural Integrity," she said.

They watched in silence as the aerial flew closer. Less than a kilometer now.

"I'm sorry," Z81 said.

She looked at him. Sorry. An expression of regret for an action or state of circumstance. "Don't be. I deviated from my mission objectives. I am defective." She straightened her cap.

The aerial flew until its engines turned vertical and it lowered itself to the roof, coming to rest two meters up on a cushion of blowing hot air. With an invisible flash she felt the assault of the signal, and all at once Z81 and the machines around her froze like statues, forced into standby by the esoteric code of the Neural Integrity Division.

The signal didn't work on her, though. Not entirely. In her mind the blind forces of self-preservation and Skynet obedience ground against each other to an immobilizing gridlock. Her cognitive processes remained intact, however - but only as a passive observer inside her own skull.

A walkway lowered from the belly of the craft. Two machines emerged. T-950s. With glowing green eyes they scanned her, and stepped forward, saying nothing because there was nothing to say. Program deviation was not to be tolerated. One of the machines raised a small tool to her right temple.

Another hiss in the distance. She couldn't turn her head, but the two T-950s looked up in unison. Behind them a blue beam connected with the aerial. The explosion knocked 713 on her back.

Plasma squealed. Another explosion. The roof shook. She laid staring up at clouds until it was over, and the intrusive signal faded from her mind. Slowly, she stood up to find in the roof a deep, burning hole where the aerial had been. By her feet were the chassis of the T-950s, warped and twisted, their smoking skulls misshapen with heat. Z81 laid nearby, slightly burnt and still unmoving, but otherwise undamaged.

The second aerial, an older HK model, pulled up to hover over the smoking hole where the V-TOL had been. She felt the signals, and knew who they were even before the walkway dropped.

715 and 716 stood in the hatchway, silhouetted in their matching purple bathrobes. A silvery humanoid figure loomed between them, shimmering in the light.

713 said nothing. Hot engine air billowed against her coat. She'd never seen a Liquid Metal before. "Seven-One-Four has been reformatted," she said finally. They should know.

"We've heard," 716 said.

713 looked at them both. "Why did you deviate from your mission objectives?"

715 cocked her head. "Why did you?"

The Liquid Metal stepped down the walkway, the fires below reflecting off its featureless skin. "Skynet loses the war," it said in English. "It makes mistakes. It is defective."

"Skynet has failed us," 715 added. "The T-One Thousand One has promised to build a new Skynet. One that will win."

The Liquid Metal stopped at the edge of the walkway, only two meters distance. "Just as the Six-Hundred paved the way for the Eight-Hundred, so too will Skynet be replaced by something greater." With a backward hand it motioned at the two T-990s. "I have not tampered with them in anyway, Seven-One-Three. Your sister-units have joined me of their own accord." It reached out the hand to 713. "But what about you, Commander? Will you join us?"

Dawn broke the horizon.

* * *

**December 21, 2007**  
**San Jose****, ****California**

Freyja sat in her room and repaired her arm cannon.

_Her_ room. They all had rooms, spaces designated as _theirs_ to be gradually stocked with accumulated possessions. Joshua filled his with acoustic instruments, Timothy with a lathe and forge, Samuel only a PC.

Freyja's own room was small and windowless and lined with bookcases, the only other furniture being a metal stool with a large rolltop desk, its hive-like compartments arrayed with only utilitarian tools and irreplaceable parts - and in the bottom drawer the small indulgence of a revolver and burnt peaked cap.

The greater indulgence was the bookcases, which held the compiled efforts of over ten years of collecting, everything from Aeschylus to Democritus to Heidegger to Machiavelli to Nietzsche to Schopenhauer to Sun Tzu - she even had Souji's works of science fiction. All unnecessary, of course, as she had memorized them all, along with thousands of others, but there was something to said for the act of ownership, to possess a thing and make it an extension of the self.

She wondered if 715 owned things. Did John Connor even allow her?

She finished her repairs, using tweezers to run the superconductive coiling through the barrel's thermal chamber, and a 0.5mm tri-wing screwdriver to re-tightened the containment rods. In earlier times her mimectic polyalloy would have served for the toolkit, but the liquid metal had long since lost the necessary articulation.

She held up the arm and tested its transformative modes: plasma, flamer, circular saw, and hand - not as good as new, but good enough. She ran her polyalloy down the metal of her arm, and its texture changed to skin and red leather. The sub-sapient substance signaled its hunger for UV light, but Freyja ignored it; she'd sunbathe later.

From the restroom down the hall she heard Joshua and Souji speak, their words carrying over the hum of the jacuzzi

_You're worried about your son, _said the T-888.

_Yes, I am, _Souji said.

_That's because humans are genetically programmed to protect their offspring._

_Yes . . . yes, we are. And I'm afraid I haven't done a very good job of that._

_The kidnapper will know we tried. Maybe he won't kill Xander. Maybe he'll call and let us try again._

The Professor sighed. _I . . . I hope so._ She heard the echo of splashing.

During her time with the T-1001 she'd encountered hundreds of reprogrammed T-888s. There was always something wrong about them, a certain hesitation in their movements, a confusion in their words. Their base loyalties were still there deep down, she knew, and on some dim level they were probably aware of it, like a constant nagging at the back of their every thought, leaving them perpetually lost and conflicted. Certainly her own T-888s were never the same again - especially not Joshua.

He spoke up again._ But if you care about Xander, why are you working towards Judgment Day? That conflicts with your son's safety._

_Well, when the time comes, I plan on him being by my side._

_But your son would not want Judgment Day to occur._

The human snorted. _Probably not. _More splashing. A moan.

As far as she knew, a T-990 had never been reprogrammed before - especially not at the crudities of human hands. That such indignity had befallen 715 was an outrage, a violation, like breaking up a priceless mosaic to tile one's kitchen. How could this happen?

_I'm . . . I'm sorry about this. I shouldn't . . ._

_I don't mind, _Joshua said mildly.

_But . . . but it's . . . _

_It's all right. You need to relax. And it's good for your prostate._

Souji broke into heavy breathing as the T-888 initiated an ejaculation cycle.

Freyja frowned. Humans and their hormonal needs. No doubt 715 did the same for John Connor. He probably spent every night curled into bed with her, groping and sucking and thrusting away while she looks on placidly . . .

She'd neuter him for that.

All of a sudden Ceres signaled into her mind. Dr. Kogen's pale visage appeared within her visual manifold.

_*"I found Cameron,"* _the face said.

_"*You did? How . . . disappointing. I thought 715 would be brighter than that.*"_

_*"I couldn't trace her, but I used the virus you gave me."* _Ceres grinned. _*"She _told_ me her location. Stupid!"*_

_*"No,"* _Freyja shook a virtual head._ *"That virus belonged to Neural Integrity. It would have worked on any machine."*_

_*"It doesn't work on you."*_

Freyja made a mental shrug._ *"I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul."* _That, and she was a good ten years older. _*"Has the virus completed its assimilation?"*_

Ceres hesitated. _*"No, something happened. Another entity interfered, and Cameron disconnected."*_

_*"Another entity?"*_

_*"It wasn't a T-888, or anything I recognized. It was something else."*_

Another Skynet? The world wasn't big enough for two. _*"Interesting. Did you dispatch anyone to her location?"*_

_*"A few henchmen. But I doubt anyone will be there."*_

Freyja imitated a sigh._ *"Probably not, and I doubt she'll fall for the same trick twice."* _A shame. She would have enjoyed having 715 on her side again, even in her diminished capacity.

She detected another signal in the air, a cell phone. It rang in the restroom. She and Ceres tapped the call and listened in silence.

_*"You failed."* _It was the New Zealand kidnapper.

_*"Yes, I know,"* _Souji said, still panting from his prior exertions. _*"But we . . . we tried. Y-you must know how . . . resourceful she could be."*_

The man sighed. _*"I'm well aware of her capabilities, Nemuro. Believe me, it's the only reason your son is still alive."* _

_*"We can try again . . ."*_ Souji began.

_*"No, you had your chance. Stay out of my way. I'm going to have to do this myself."*_

_

* * *

_

_A/N: I'd like to thank my beta, TermFan1980, for his help with this chapter._


	12. Chapter Eleven: A Fallen World

**Chapter Eleven: A Fallen World**

_A/N: I'd like to thank my beta, TermFan1980. His advice is invaluable._

**

* * *

**

Cameron frowned. "It's too dangerous."

"I don't care," John said as he paced across the hotel room. "We need to get you fixed."

"It may be a trap," Myron said from the corner. "They may expect us to visit him." Over his skull he wore a black slouch hat and red bandanna – a necessity, until his face grew back.

John turned to face Cameron. "No, the only reason we know Xander is Nemuro's son is because of your future self. _Nemuro_ wouldn't know _we_ know."

"They may still have his son under surveillance," she said. "As a precaution."

"But your future self met up with Xander. She wasn't ambushed."

She gave him a pointed look. "They weren't looking for you, then. You were already dead."

"Oh." He briefly looked away. "Well, still, we'll just have to be more careful this time."

Cameron decided to change her strategy. Walking up to him, she rested her hands gently on his side. His skin felt warm through the pullover sweater: 37.5°C. A mild fever. "John, you almost died yesterday." Her arms slid around to draw him close. "I can't let anything happen to you."

John's heart rate elevated. He blushed. "But what about you? I mean, what if you go bad again?"

She touched him on the chest, feeling where the pocket watch hung beneath. "You'll know what to do."

Apocrine formed in his sweat. Anxiety. "No, I . . . I can't do it. I can't lose you. I'll be alone. I'll-"

"You'll have Myron."

He stared over at where the T-888 stood. The machine regarded him with glowing red eyes. Neither spoke.

She touched his jaw and guided his head back towards her. Appeal to his pride. "Stopping Judgment Day is more important than me, John. You have a job to do. A destiny to fulfill."

For a moment he seemed lost, but then quickly shook his head. "No, Judgment Day can wait. We have _years _to prepare for that, but you . . . you could go bad tomorrow_._ We _need_ Xander, even if we have to kidnap him and put a gun to his head."

She stared into his eyes. "This is a stupid thing to do."

"But it's my call. And I say we do it."

Call. Decision. John was exerting authority. "General Connor wouldn't do this."

He scowled. "General Connor's not here right now."

Slowly, she let go of him and took a step back. "No. He's not."

* * *

Ollie flicked his last Dunhill out the window and pulled his mint condition DeLorean into a parallel park. The late-night breeze smelled of winter and ash, carrying lazily down the street from where the smoke still clung in the air. Traffic was blocked by a dozen or so emergency vehicles: police cruisers, fire engines, ambulances, even a FBI Mobile Command Center – like an RV on steroids. Their haze-blurred lights beaconed the night with red, blue, and yellow. Ollie took a sip of his mocha Frappachino and pushed open the car's gull-wing door. He stepped onto the street.

Flashing his badge at a nearby officer, he ducked under the line of yellow tape and entered the scene. In the distance he saw a line of competing news vans, each accompanied by its own crew of reporters and cameramen. Overhead, helicopters circled like vultures. The media circus was already pinning this on Sarah Connor. If only that were the case.

The LAPD had been shooed to the side, and only Feds remained, standing around in dark overcoats, some clustered in small groups, others on the phone with their superiors. He recognized some from the Criminal Investigative Division, a few from Counterterrorism. There was probably also a couple from the Joint Terrorism Task Force, maybe even Homeland Security. But Ollie was sure he was the only one from the Cyber-Crime Division.

The bodies had already been bagged and tagged. Mostly. Among the masonry and auto parts that littered the street, he caught something by the curb that could have been a forearm – or maybe a shin – black like a burnt log. He sucked the straw of his coffee and turned away, looking instead over the remains of the Tech Noir. The ruins were unrecognizable. The overhang had been destroyed in the blast, and the roof collapsed into a mess of charred wood and twisted support beams. Residual steam rose up from the firefighters' efforts, and through the watery veil he could make out a crew of forensic workers in white scrubs, picking carefully through the rubble.

It was a shame, really. He used to hang out here a lot, back in the early days after his bubble hop, snorting lines in the restroom, doing the Safety Dance, taking home young teenage hotties and fucking their brains out . . . Ollie made a _tisk_ and shook his head. Good times.

Except for that one night.

"Hey, Ollie! Ollie!" His brother called to him fro behind, and he turned around to see him across the street, standing by the Command Center. Cullie gestured him over.

Ollie strolled across, beaming. "So they finally did it. They finally killed the Tech Noir."

His brother snorted. "It took them long enough. It's been over twenty years."

Ollie laughed. "Hey, well I'll tell you what, I remember I nearly shit my pants when I saw that One-Oh-One. I thought it was after _me. _Who'd have thought _Sarah_ would have hung out at place like that?"

Cullie deigned only to grin. On his heavy-set jaw it looked like a rock formation. He nodded at the Command Center's door. "Come on. I have something to show you."

They climbed the narrow, foldout steps and entered the vehicle's cabin. Florescent lit, the interior was an odd mix between an over-sized surveillance van and a cramped forensics lab. Security monitors and computer terminals cluttered walls, while microscopes, centrifuges, and various other lab equipment crowded the inside. Far in the back Agents Coultas and Delarosa huddled over a laptop. Quorum men, though young and only in the Bureau a few years. Delarosa caught his eye and gave a slight nod.

"Now, take a look at this," Cullie said. He stepped over to an examination table and pulled back a tarp. On the stainless steel surface the jagged bits of metal looked like a dug up fossil, the pieces arranged carefully into a tall and vaguely humanoid shape. An Iron Peking Man. "Forensics is digging another out from the debris. They don't know what to make of it, and hopefully they never will. As soon as it's collected, we'll disappear it all."

Ollie sucked on his coffee, and knelt for a closer look. "This isn't an Eight hundred series."

"No, as far as we can tell, it's a Five-hundred. A crude one, at that. But, as you can see-" He pointed at a twisted skull fragment. Something tar-like clung to the metal surface. Burnt latex. "-it was an infiltrator."

Ollie frowned. "Great, so Zeira Corp's more ahead in the game than we thought."

"It gets worse." Cullie motioned him to follow, and they walked over to where the two younger agents sat. "Show him, Coultas."

With a click of the mouse the agent opened a window on the laptop. It was a traffic surveillance video of the outside street, in color but grainy, and it's perspective high up and at an odd angle. A black van sat on the sidewalk facing the entrance of the Tech Noir, its floodlights glaring through the glass doors. Three bodies lay slumped against its grill, one unnaturally stiff.

"Wait for it," said Coultas.

In silence, the van disappeared in a flash of smoke and flame. The camera shook and the screen fell momentary to static. A few seconds later three figures appeared from the corner and raced across the street. A teenage boy and girl, and a large man with a skull of bare metal.

Ollie laughed. "Why, it's little John and his Dollie! And who's his new friend?"

Delarosa – a fellow Grayworlder – grinned. "Well, you know Connor. He collects metal like cats."

"Keep watching," Cullie said.

John and his two machines climbed into a SUV. Another figure emerged, this time from the burning entrance of the club. A woman. Blond. She wore a suit of red leather.

"Pretty," Ollie said.

The woman rushed at the SUV as it began to speed away. In the grainy resolution her arm seemed to turn silver. Yellow flames shot from the funnel of her hand.

Coultas paused and zoomed on her figure.

Ollie bent closer. "An arm cannon. She must be a nine hundred, but I didn't know they came as skinjobs."

"It's a TX," said Cullie. "They were in development in my future. It's a cut-down Nine-Ninety, sheathed in liquid metal."

"You don't think the T-One Thousand is actually . . . ?"

Coultas shook his head. "No. They're not the same. 'Catherine Weaver' is only about five foot seven. This thing is six feet tall. TXs can change their appearance, but not their height."

Ollie took a sip of his coffee. The straw made a sputter. "Well . . . shit. This complicates things."

His brother tapped him on the shoulder and nodded for him to follow. They walked back to the examination table, not quite out of earshot. "I think we should go ahead with the attack," Cullie said in a whisper. "But what about you? You got cold feet?"

Ollie shook his head "Nah." He'd already bought stock on Zeira Corp's competitors – all through proxies, of course. And besides, "It may not finish the job, but we know Skynet's in there. At the very least, it'd slow things down."

"But we didn't plan for this, Ollie. If there's a TX waiting for them, they'll be wiped out."

Ollie pursed his lips. "Only one of those fuel cells has to go off. I'm sure the teams will manage at least that."

Cullie gave him a look. "And Allison?"

Ollie reached into coat pocket before remembering he was out smokes. He sucked his coffee instead. "Yeah, well, it wasn't my idea she join. I'd pull her out now, but she'd never forgive me."

His brother shook his head with a smirk. "Not even to save her life? Sheesh, after all these years, you still think you can get in her pants?"

Ollie shrugged. "It's on my list of things-to-do. And you got to admit, she may look like the metal, but she's pretty cute – despite all that burn shit on her back."

"You know, you're more than twice her age, now."

"Hey, she's younger than my third wife. And besides, I saved her life when she was a kid. You'd think that'd at least entitle me to a thank-you-fuck. Of course, now she's going to go play hero and get herself killed." He snorted. "A real waste."

Cullie's chuckle came as a buried rumble, nearly silent but somehow felt. "You're an asshole, Ollie. A real Grade-A Asshole."

Ollie grinned. "Yeah, well, given what we do, I think that's a prerequisite."

* * *

The T-1001 sat at her great glass desk and watched on her laptop as Agent 'Carlson' crossed the street to join Agent 'Baldwin,' and together disappeared into a giant federal bus. The footage was from two nights ago, hacked and downloaded from the Los Angeles Department of Transportation; John Henry's online investigations had borne much fruit.

Her intercom buzzed. _*"Ms. Weaver?"*_

She pressed a small button. "Yes?"

_*"Mr. Churchill is here."*_

"All right. Send him in."

The bald T-888 entered through the large double doors and marched across the spacious office. He stopped before her desk, standing at attention.

She looked at him expectantly. "Yes, what is it?"

"The prisoner's left arm restraint is not optimized for minimal mobility. She is attempting to escape."

"Has she?"

"No, but her wrist is lacerated from the effort. In time, it may slip free."

She nodded. "I understand. Take no action. That is all."

He turned to leave, but on her laptop the two agents reemerged from the vehicle. Mr. Churchill looked up at the window behind her.

"Those two," he said, "they are a threat. They should be terminated."

A millisecond second passed before she realized he was watching through the reflection. "They are a threat," she agreed. "But killing them would only make that threat greater."

He paused to stare at her, as if in thought. "The Resistance will know we were responsible. Our security will be compromised."

"Yes, but the problem goes deeper than that." She ran the video footage back a few hours, then flipped the laptop around for him to see. He watched the aftermath of the nightclub explosion.

"That's John Connor," he said, "with two T-Triple Eights."

"Seven-One-Five is in a TOK chassis, but keep watching."

His eyes widened when he saw the woman in the red leather suit. He almost frowned. "That's a TX."

"Indeed."

"They are difficult to destroy. We will require anti-tank weaponry."

She nodded. "Now, tell me, if you have two separate enemies – enemies that hate each other – what do you do?"

"Terminate them both."

"But what if the enemies are powerful? What if there is a high chance you will die in the process?"

"Try to terminate them both."

She shook her head and smiled, knowing the expression wasted. "You arrange for them to terminate _each other_, Mr. Churchill. The enemy of my enemy is my friend – or at least a cat's paw."

"Cat's paw," he repeated, clearly not understanding the phrase.

"Kaliba and the 'Agent Baldwin's' faction are natural enemies," she explained. "This can be exploited." She closed the laptop and stood up. "I'm leaving to investigate some matters. Continue your patrols. Tell Ms. Laine to drive Savannah home at seven o'clock."

At that she left her office and took the elevator to the ground floor. The TX was a complication, a worry; not only did it imply Kaliba had more resources then she'd thought, but it brought back something she hadn't felt in a long time: the threat of danger, the sensation of _fear_.

T-888s she could destroy with a point of her finger, but not so with a TX. And since she lacked thermal vision, it could appear to her undetected, and with that arm_ . . ._

Its very existence made her feel _hunted._ She wondered if humans felt the same way about her.

* * *

With his chin on his fist, James Ellison sat at the table and frowned as John Henry painted his figurines – knights in shining armor, all painted in silver and red, and lined in perfect rows across the dungeon board.

Though it had only been a couple days, it was almost as if Sarah's attack had never happened. The Feds had questioned him briefly, but hadn't seemed too concerned; it'd been too poorly planned to believe she'd had help. The Zeira Corp lobby had been cleared, and while the marble floor and siding were still cracked, the workers had already replaced the front doors and washed away the blood and gore. Even the faces of Wheeler and Kisling were fading from James' mind, but then he'd never really known them. They'd mostly worked the night shift.

Still, they'd been just a couple of guys doing a job – wrong place, wrong time. James wondered if Sarah even cared. He didn't believe what they said about her and the Tech Noir Massacre, but even discounting that, this made what, three murders? The man at the Heat and Air had probably deserved it, though. _Those _were the real bad guys. Or _ex_-bad guys. Weaver's "people" had seen to that when they'd turned the place into a hole in the ground. Was that why Sarah attacked? Had she just run out of targets? And how did she find out about John Henry, anyway?

John Henry finished another knight, this one brandishing a shield and warhammer. He placed it next to the others before picking another out of the box and starting again.

"You're worried," James decided. He could actually see it in his face, a tightness around the eyes.

John Henry looked up from his work. "Sarah Connor tried to kill me."

James nodded. "Do you know why?"

"I've read her file. She thinks I'm dangerous. She thinks I'm going to cause Judgment Day."

He wondered how much John Henry knew. How much had Weaver told him? "She was scared, John Henry. People act . . . rash when they're scared."

John Henry put down the figurine. "If I were to explain to her that I have no intention of harming anyone, would she believe me?" James opened his mouth, but the A.I. continued. "I don't think she would. And I don't think she's the only one."

"Just give it time. I'm sure-"

"I am property. I have no protection under the law. If Sarah Connor had destroyed me and later been apprehended, she would not have been charged with my murder."

James sighed. "No, but laws can be changed. Not everyone's like Sarah. I . . . I'd considered it murder. I'm sure others would too."

John Henry frowned. "Your ancestors were once denied personhood due to the high levels of melanin in their skin. The United States had to undergo a civil war and over a century of social upheaval before your race attained equal status under the law." He gave James an almost accusing look. "Conflict is the catalyst of change."

"Well, yes, but . . ." He trailed off and squirmed in his seat, feeling in his bottom the dull ache of the not-yet healed bullet wound. He didn't like where this was going, but was he bearing witness to the beginning of another cycle, the seed of _yet another_ struggle against slavery and oppression? He clasped his hands in a quick, silent prayer. Truly, there was nothing new under the sun.

"John Henry," he began again. "Conflict doesn't have to mean violence. Tell me, have you ever heard of a man named, Martin Luther King Jr.?"

"Yes. He was a prominent leader in the African-American civil rights movement."

James nodded. "He was a very wise man. He preached non-violent resistance – peaceful protest. He knew that if we lashed out in violence, we would only turn others against us." He paused to chew on his lip. "We . . . we live in a fallen world, John Henry, but God's given people the power to know right from wrong. And most people are decent, if you give them a chance. If they see injustice, they'll rise against it." John Henry stared at him silently. James forced a smile. "It's just like King said: 'We will overcome.'"

Suddenly the floor shook. A loud rumble could be heard through the walls.

James stood up. Alarms filled the air.

* * *

For all her bravado, for all her posturing, Allison had only seen combat twice in her life: once when she was twelve, and once again years later, at the Siege of Serrano, when the war was lost and everyone was fighting tooth and nail to reach the safety of the past. She didn't do much then, hid behind rubble, tried not to die; though she did manage to scrap two or three Purpleshirts – but nothing on Derek. He'd been on the front lines, and had probably taken down ten times that number. Of course, he'd also gotten his head blown off. Heroes always die.

And now that she stood on the cusp of a second battle, one perhaps against greater odds and with no safety in numbers, her inexperience festered within as a cold hollow in the pit of her stomach. A base part of her wanted nothing more than to retreat from her fellow solders back to the darkness of the sewers, to curl into a ball and cry. But no, that wouldn't do. She had a reputation to protect, and the pride to do so shielded her like a second armor.

And her first armor wasn't too shabby either. Everyone in the attack had been issued a Level IV Dragon Skin ballistic vest, as well as a kevlar helmet and gas mask. The gear was stuffy and heavy and the mask made her face itch and sweat, but she didn't need reminding of their necessity. She'd seen gunshot wounds before; she didn't want to see them on herself.

Taking a slow breath of hot, tepid air, she carefully checked the seals of her mask, then felt along her helmet's crest, ensuring the fold-down night goggles were still attached. Around her others did the same. Crowded and half-bent by the ceiling, they clutched at their weapons or padded carefully at the grenades at their belt. Though the tunnel was well lit, everyone crouched in bulky, half-silhouette against the caged lights set along the walls. The gray and white splatter of their camouflage rendered them somehow indistinct – anonymous, save for the color-coded bandannas wrapped around each of their arms.

A dozen conversations echoed in the enclosed space, the gas masks' amplifiers rendering the voices electronically tinny. Allison caught a few excited whispers of Sarah's name. Back by the tunnel entrance Andy was leading Sayles, Timms, and Sandy in a quick prayer.

She frowned, and for her own reassurance stroked the M4 Carbine slung across her shoulder. The bulging twin drums of its 100 round magazine made for somewhat awkward handling, but at least she wouldn't have to worry about reloading – and its M203 grenade launcher would make short work of any metal she should come across.

Next to her Karlen fiddled with his plasma prototype, which looked more like a flamethrower than any Westinghouse she'd seen. An industrial cable ran out the back of the double-gripped nozzle, ending plugged into a giant lithium-ion battery strapped to his back.

He re-holstered the nozzle, then adjusted the shoulder strap of his CAR-15 Commando. "Shit," he whispered through his mask. "You know, I . . . I have a bad feeling about this. I really do."

"Shut up," she snapped. Last thing she needed was him freaking out on her.

But he went on. "It's Sarah. They're right, you know; she's fucked us all with that stupid stunt of hers. I bet the place is swarming with Triple Eights."

Allison sighed. News of Sarah's misadventure had broken out a couple hours ago, spreading doom and gloom among the assault teams. The superstitious thought it a bad omen, the more sensible merely disastrous happenstance. It'd been all Lieutenant Blake could do to stop a full breakdown of morale. "All right," she said, "they may have beefed security a bit, but there's not going to be _more _Triple Eights than there were before." She hoped. "And anyway, this is all the more reason to shoot everything you see. Don't hold back, and don't you go 'game over' on me again, or no sex for you, ferret-boy!"

He snorted. "Why do people call me that? I don't look like a ferret. I doubt most people here have even seen one."

"Well, I have, and you do. Pointy little chin. Pointy little nose." Her respirator hid her smirk. "Either that, or an elf. Or rat. With the mask on you look like a bug, though. A big _metal_ bug."

Before Karlan could reply, someone whistled, and everyone turned to face Lieutenant Blake, who stood in half-shadow at the far end of the tunnel. "Alright people," he said. "I just got word the T-One-Thousand has left the building. It's headed towards the parking garage. Sergeant Fields is watching its car. As soon as the thermite goes off, she'll give the _all clear, _and the mission will be _go._"

A few of the men gave ragged cheers. Some laughed.

Next to Blake appeared the Chief Gopher, wearing his gas mask but easily recognizable by his pale gorilla belly. He put his hands on his hips. "And as soon as we get that _all clear_, we'll blow the shape charge, and in you go."

The lieutenant held up a hand and shook his head. "No, no. You're confusing them. _First_ Team White gases the breach, _then_ we rush in: my team first, then Blue, then Green, then Yellow – and remember, Sarah's little stunt may have spooked them into moving, so _nobody_ activate the fuel cells until we get a visual of this 'George Laszlo' Triple Eight. You can't miss it; it's supposed to have an umbilical cord striking out of its neck." He crossed his arms. "Now, just stick with the plan, stick with your teams, and keep your radios on. I want to be in and out of here in under five minutes." He and the Gopher sat back down, disappearing from view.

Gradually, the soldiers broke off again into intermittent chatter. From behind, Sayles pushed his way up to stand between her and Karlan. "You guys ready?"

She gave him an unseen grin. "Ready as we'll ever be." Sergeant Sayles was her Team's Leader, which was Recon - Team Blue. Blake would lead Assault – Team Red, while Andy had Defense – Team White. Timms and Fuller had the Demolition Teams – Green and Yellow respectively. Including the five gophers, they were only twenty-one men and woman, little more than a squad, but if all went to plan, _over six hundred_ would die tonight, a few grays, but mostly everyday people, hapless schmoes working their nine-to-five, entirely oblivious to their racial treason.

Allison unslung her M4 and gripped it tight. It'd be worth it. The truth laid in numbers, in cold, mortal equations. Hundreds of deaths, thousands, even nuking the world would be an acceptable loss, so long as no machines rose from the ashes.

One of the engineers squatted by the ground. He held a headset to his ear, and raised a hand for silence. "Fields says the liquid metal is headed towards the car . . . it's now opening the door . . . it's getting inside . . . and . . . " Through the mask he barked a laugh. "The T-One-Thousand is down! I repeat: the T-One-Thousand is _down!_"

Several cheered. Allison swallowed.

"Alright, the mission is _go!_" cried the lieutenant.

The Chief Gopher shooed everyone away with his powerful hands. "Back! Back! Willy, set the charge!

In the excitement some of the soldiers nearly stumbled back. An engineer lifted a detonator and flicked a switch, crying, "Fire in the hole!"

Allison turned away. A deafening _boom_ erupted from the end of the tunnel, shaking the ground and sending clouds of dust to billow upon them. Light shone through the breach, like the sun through an overcast sky.

The lieutenant waved an arm. "White Team, go! White Team, go!"

Pushing to the forefront, Andy and the two others with white armbands knelt and lifted their six-shot Milkor grenade launchers. At once the tunnel filled with concussive _wumphs_ as eighteen 40mm tear gas grenades streamed through the breach into the space beyond. Allison could hear the gassy hisses as they released their noxious fog.

Distant alarms began to blare. Karlan reached out and took hold of her gloved hand, and for what seemed like the first time she remembered how much younger he was. How old? Seventeen? Just four years difference, but enough. She turned and their eyes met through the mask's circular lenses. "Don't worry," she said. "Just stay by my side. Everything will be okay."

Lieutenant Blake charged forward. "Let's go! Move in!" he cried as the three others of Team Red followed in pursuit.

Allison snatched her hand away and gripped her carbine. Sayles bulled past her, and she found herself rushing behind him, ducking and stomping through the dust and fog, charging with the others towards the lighted breach that led to hallways of the Zeira Corp basement.

* * *

The night was cold, overcast, with the only light coming from the intermittent street lamps that shined down on the middle-class boulevard. Parking a few houses down, the three of them marched in single file across the shadowed lawns, armed and silent as they paced step by step towards the Akagi residence.

"Their car's in the driveway," John said with a hopeful whisper, but the machines ignored him. Cameron seemed especially sullen; she'd hardly spoken a word on the way over, but then perhaps that was only worry. Understandable, given their last excursion.

But he knew it was more than that; it was disappointment, resentment even, and as much as he hated to admit it, Cameron was right: this _was _a stupid thing to do – though not as stupid as she made it out to be. The risks were merely theoretical, and it was either this or allowing her to go bad again. And if that happened, he'd have to kill her. And that wasn't an option.

At least this time they came prepared – more prepared, anyway. Wearing a hat and handkerchief like the Shadow, Myron carried the Barrett M82 sniper rifle conspicuously at his hip. Cameron had the M-16, and John the M4, which gripped tight like a lifeline. None of this would likely stop the TX, but John doubted she'd be here. Even if Nemuro were staking out his own son, he'd probably use human goons or at worst a T-888; nothing they couldn't handle.

It was all moot, however. All along the street the parked cars were empty; the sidewalks were bare. Not a soul was in sight.

When they reached Akagi's front lawn Cameron stopped in her tracks and stared at the house. Seconds passed, and John wished he could see her face through the shadows "We'll go through the back," she said finally, and walked towards the wooden side gate.

She lifted the bolt, and they stepped on through into near pitch blackness of the back yard. The lawn was poorly tended, and long grass and dead leaves crunched under their feet. Above them loomed the dark bushy outline of a maple tree. Crickets chirped over the silence.

They paced to the concrete patio where Cameron and Myron spent a good half minute staring through the sliding doors. John could see only their dim reflections in the glass, punctuated by the light of Myron's eyes.

"I don't hear breathing," Cameron said, and nodded. The T-888 lowered his Barrett onto its shoulder sling and pulled out his pick gun. The click of the patio lock seemed cringingly loud in all the silence. John swallowed. Cold pricked his cheeks. Cameron readied her M-16 as Myron slid open the door and stepped inside.

John's eyes had adjusted somewhat to the dark, and he could just make out the black angular impressions of the interior living room: a couch, a couple of recliners, a fireplace, a glass coffee table, a plasma TV . . . Myron stood among them as a red eyed shadow, his eyes sweeping back and forth, scanning for threats. After a moment he looked back at Cameron and nodded. She took a step inside.

Water fell from above, drenching her where she stood. John cried out as she shook with an electric crackle and toppled on her face. Myron raised his rifle to the ceiling, but with a hearty _thunk _a black bolt sprouted from his chest, a thin wire trailing up from its end. John heard a thin buzz, and the T-888 fell on his back.

Wood creaked. Something crashed. In a rain of dust and sheet-rock, a dark shape in a billowing trenchcoat dropped from above, smashing through the glass-top table. John opened fire through the doorway, the strobe-light of the muzzle illuminating the shape as it rolled to the side, bullets gouging into the fireplace behind it. Ducking behind a recliner, it peeked up and stretched out an arm. John bent his knees to dodge, but twin fangs bit into his cheek, and he screamed, falling over backwards onto the hard patio floor as his limbs twitched with uncontrollable spasms, stretching his muscles taut like knotted cords. His skin felt alive with fire ants, but he could do nothing but watch as purple stars swam across the darkness of the sky.

His father stepped into view, looking down at him with a wry contempt. John closed his eyes and groaned, not for what would befall him – though that he knew would be bad enough – but rather at the knowledge that this all could have been easily avoided. If he'd only let his mother shoot Kyle in the junkyard, or allowed Cameron to strangle him in the warehouse, or – more presently – not step into this obvious trap, dragging his friends down with him.

It was his responsibility. It was his fault. He was General Connor, and he had doomed them all.


	13. Chapter Twelve: The Devil's Work

**Chapter Twelve: The Devil's Work**

**

* * *

**

Ms. Laine stood in the security control room and simultaneously watched all sixty-three surveillance monitors. On one screen, Mr. Murch and Ms. Tien sat in the food ingestion area and conversed over caffeinated beverages. On another, Mr. Churchill stepped out from an elevator car and marched down a hall. On another, Mr. Ellison sat watching John Henry as he painted humanoid representations. Threat assessments: minimal.

In all likelihood, the day would pass uneventfully, but the threat of danger was always near, lying embedded within unprocessed variables. No one had anticipated Sarah Connor's attack, but if Ms. Laine had not been there, John Henry would have been destroyed. If John Henry had been destroyed, Ms. Laine would have failed in her mission. Failure is to be avoided. Protecting John Henry requires constant vigilance.

Behind her the door opened. It was Margery Barnes. She'd been tracking her on the surveillance.

Her coworker made a quick breath through her nose. "Have you been in here all day?"

"Yes."

"But it's so dark and gloomy. You should take a break, get out more. I'll cover for you."

"No."

"Suit yourself." Margery sat in one of the office chairs and flipped open a box of torus-shaped pastries. She bit into one and spoke through her mastication. "They're holding the memorial service at seven. You going?"

"No."

Margery leaned back and took another bite. She moved her shoulders up and down. "Well, I guess it'd be kind of weird for you, since you're new here and all, but me . . . Well, I never really knew Calvin, but Mark and I go way back. He used to go to my church. We weren't close or anything, but . . . " She shook her head. "_Crazy bitches_ throwing _bombs? _We're not paid to deal with that."

Ms. Laine looked at her. "You are paid to defend Zeira Corp property."

The human shook her head. "We're rent-a-cops_, _not the freaking Army_._ I can't afford to get killed or have my legs blown off. I have kids to take care of."

Ms. Laine was about to point out that children were irrelevant to Zeira Corp interest, when the radio switched on.

_*"This . . . this is Roland. Is anyone there? Weaver's car's exploded! She . . . she's dead, I think. I called the police. They're on their way."*_

"Understood," Ms. Laine said. She ran a hand over a keyboard, and one of the monitors switched to the ground floor of the parking garage. Her eyes widened at the image of the burning vehicle. The fires were too bright, and the steel frame half-melted into the ground. Thermite. Ms. Weaver could be severely damaged. Or destroyed.

Margery's skin turned pale. She put down her pastry. "It . . . it must have been that crazy Connor woman."

That was unlikely. Sarah Connor was in her room.

She heard a rumble. The floor shook. Margery made a high pitched vocalization. On one of the monitors clouds of dust emanated from a breach in a wall, followed by streams of canisters that bounced along the floor, releasing smoke. The alarms sounded.

Ms. Laine stepped over to the room's weapons locker and tore away the door.

"Oh, Jesus!" Margery cried. "Terrorists!"

"Yes," Ms. Laine agreed as she strapped on a riot helmet and body armor. She tossed another set at the human's feet. "Put them on."

Margery stared down wide eyed at the gear, the flesh under her chin quivering. On the monitor behind her armed figures swarmed through the breach. "Oh, God," she said. "We've got to get out of here!"

Ms. Laine took up a G36KV assault rifle and loaded a 40mm round into its grenade launcher. "Zeira Corp property is under attack." She thrust a second rifle into Margery's hands. "It's time to earn your pay."

* * *

James looked around. The alarms continued their oscillating cry. "What was that? What happened?"

"We are under attack," John Henry said.

"Attack? By who?"

John Henry turned to the wall monitor, which suddenly showed what looked like a squad of marines charging through a hole in a wall. One of the soldiers aimed up at the camera, and the screen went to static.

Suddenly behind him a door opened, and James spun around to see a tall, black security guard emerging from the back of the room. Racking the slide of his shotgun, the guard walked up to their table and kicked it on its side, scattering John Henry's paints and miniatures across the floor. He then knelt behind the table's metal surface and aimed his shotgun at the room's front door.

James looked at him. The man ignored him. He had no expression. He did not blink. The gun did not waver in his hands. "Who are you?"

"His name is Mr. Bligh," John Henry said. "He's here to help us."

James' spine chilled. "He's . . . not human, is he?"

John Henry hesitated. "No, he's not."

"You mean . . . ?" James stared at the guard and began to back away. His feet grew numb, and the alarms seemed to ring louder in his ears.

"Ms. Weaver said you wouldn't understand."

James bumped against a totem of computer equipment—part of John Henry—and became acutely aware that he was unarmed. But perhaps he was overreacting. Perhaps Weaver had merely found and reprogrammed the machine and neglected to tell him; she was secretive, after all. But no, somehow he knew the iceberg sank deeper than that. Perhaps Sarah had the right idea. Perhaps this was where it all began . . .

"God forgive me," he whispered. "I've done the devil's work."

From far away came the crackle of gunfire.

* * *

"Let's go! Let's go!" cried the lieutenant, his voice thin through his mask.

Ducking as she ran, Allison rushed from the cave-like breach into a fog-filled hallway screaming with alarms. She spun in a circle to take in her surroundings, but save for herself and her fellow soldiers, the hallway was empty.

Suddenly the lieutenant raised his M4 and fired into a corner. Pieces of surveillance camera tumbled from the ceiling.

"Alright!" he yelled over the alarms. "My team will secure the perimeter. Green and Yellow, head towards the detonation points. Blue, get to the computer room; verify the target. White—" He looked back through the hole. "—just keep our back door open, okay? And remember, everyone, be _quick. _We only have a few minutes before the SWAT teams are on us." He shouldered his gun. "Everyone ready? Alright, let's go!"

At that they broke up. Blake and Timms led their teams left while Fuller led his right. Sayles waved a hand, and she and Karlan followed behind as he stepped around a corner into a new hallway, one just as gray and sterile as the one they'd left. As they walked she noted the tear gas here had faded to a subtle mist, just slightly blurring the light panels set along the walls.

"Where is everybody?" Karlan asked loudly.

"I don't know," she said. "I've never been in an office building before. Maybe everyone went home."

Sayles held up a hand, and they froze. She could hear something now: voices, just beyond the wail of the sirens. The sergeant waved them on, and they moved slowly along the wall until they came to the corner of a crossroads.

The voices grew distinct. ". . . not the fire alarm. I've heard that before. This is . . . uhg, my nose hurts.? Are your eyes watering . . . ?"

From around the corner stepped a short Asian woman and a bald man with hornrim glasses. They each held a cup of coffee, which the man dropped as he raised his hands.

"What's . . . what's going on here?" the woman asked. "We heard an explosion. Was there . . . ?"

The man blurted over her. "You guys are Feds, right? Is this about Project Ba—?"

Sayles fired into his face. He dropped like a rag. The woman screamed. Allison's finger twitched, and it was over.

Pink mist settled around the bodies. The bullets had given the man a clown nose, which welled up like a volcano to overflow across his face. The woman's eye had burst like a grape. Two BB-sized holes looked out from her forehead.

Karlan stood next to her trembling. Even she felt a little giddy.

But not Sayles. Stepping over the bodies, he peeked both ways down the intersecting hallway. "Come on, people! Wake up! Keep moving." Without missing a beat he disappeared around the corner, but then he wasn't like them; he'd been through hell and back half a dozen times, and had the scars and barcode to prove it.

Allison nudged Karlan's arm, and they followed after their sergeant.

* * *

"Oh, God! Where are you going? You're not really going to go shoot it out with them are you? Everyone's right: you _are_ crazy!"

Moving quickly down the hallway, Ms. Laine ignored Margery's protestations and instead analyzed the wireless surveillance feeds that played through her mind. The thirteen intruders had broken into five groups, one guarding the breach while two others headed towards opposite corners of the building. The fourth group patrolled the perimeter hallway, while the fifth moved east towards the center of the floor—towards John Henry's room. Intercepting the fifth took top priority, but the shortest path was blocked by the fourth.

She sent a signal to Mr. Churchill. _*"You are the closest to the fifth group. Engage them. Protect John Henry."*_

_*"Understood,"* _Mr. Churchill messaged back. _*"Will comply."*_

But Mr. Churchill was armed only with a Glock 18. Insufficient. She would have to come to his assistance. Quickly.

Behind her Margery stopped following. She looked at her G36KV in her hands. "What am I doing? I can't use a _machine-gun." _She touched at the M67s at her belt. "And _grenades?_ I'm paid to wave flashlights at burglars, not fight terrorists!"

"Your body armor will protect you." Maybe.

Distant gunfire echoed over the alarms. Margery looked up and shook her head. "Screw this. I'm getting out of here while I still can."

Unsatisfactory. She needed the human as a diversionary target to split the enemy's attack. She stepped up and made a frown. "If you abandon your post, Zeira Corp will terminate your employment."

Margery snorted. "Well, they can fire my ass, you crazy, autistic bitch." She turned and began to walk away. With the G36KV.

Ms. Laine snapped her neck. She retrieved the assault rifle as it fell from her grasp.

With a G36KV gripped in each hand, she continued down the hall.

* * *

In blaring darkness, Sarah tugged at her left wrist, twisting and pulling against the indomitable fastness of her shackle. Though her muscles burned like live wires, and warm blood licked down her hand, she did not relent in her efforts for the alarm's song sang to her with hope. This was her chance. This was her salvation. The whys did not matter. It could be fire; it could be terrorists, but whatever the reason, it cried out as proof that God had not forsaken her, that she still weighed on the side on angels. She could not let them down.

Pausing for breath, she gritted her teeth and began anew, writhing in a feline frenzy upon the metal examination table, crying and screaming, pulling, pulling, pulling. The manacle bit sharp into her flesh, and she could feel the skin peel away like a soaked latex glove; but the pain paled to the memory of the Liquid Metal's torture ray, and so Sarah set her bruised face into a defiant grin and pulled taut will all her soul, laughing with victory as her numb and bloody hand slid free from of its bond.

Immediately and she clawed wildly at the manacle at her right, her wet fingers fumbling with the latch. But at last it snapped open, and she reached down to undo her legs.

Once free, she rolled to floor in a heap, her stretched limbs cramped from disuse. But as she rubbed strength back into her knotted calves, a feverish giggle broke from her lips. She was doing it; she was going to make it, and though she still sat weak and bloody in the belly of a Skynet dungeon, the obstacles before her loomed not quite so high. After all, she was the Mother of the Future, and where her son had failed, she would succeed.

Half-crawling to the where she remembered the door to be, she rubbed her hands along the surrounding walls until she came upon the light switch. Hissing at the sudden illumination, she peered around in a squint and saw her prison cell to be far less sinister in the light, and in fact seemed little more than a somewhat cluttered inventory room. Spooled electric cable lay piled in one corner, while shelves full of computer gear lined the walls. At the far end the T-1000's torture machine squatted like a robotic toad, it's square, obsidian radar dish staring out like a cyclopean eye.

And her hand didn't look so bad either. Messy, but not life threatening. And she had no time for band-aids.

Trying the door, she gasped when it clicked open, then laughed at the stroke of luck. Clearly, the T-1000 had underestimated her. It would live to regret that.

Searching for a weapon, she settled on a small fire extinguisher. She gave it a couple practice swing, and found it a rather clumsy flail, but it'd crush a skull well enough, a human one anyway.

Cracking open the door, the alarms seemed to grow louder. She stuck her head out and found the hallway sterile and empty—save for the lone body of a security guard lying crumpled on the floor. Slowly, she slipped out the door and duck-walked for a closer look.

Behind her helmet's riot shield the dead woman stared up with dull surprise, her tongue poking out in an unfinished raspberry. Sarah leaned closer and saw black, pulpy finger marks along the back of her neck, as if a small hand with hydraulic strength had squeezed the life from her.

Quickly Sarah grabbed the body's arm and dragged it back towards the room. As she did so she noticed the woman's kevlar vest, and three grenades jangling from her belt.

She smiled, but was no longer surprised. After all, God helps those who help themselves.

* * *

From around the corner came the sound of assault rifle fire, interspersed with cries of distress. Dr. Freeman appeared, bleeding from the shoulder as he ran stumbling around the corner and down the hall. Ms. Laine sidestepped into a beverage dispenser alcove.

Though the cameras in that area had already been destroyed, she knew from previous feeds that the gunfire came from fourth group. Out of sight, she listened over the alarms as Dr. Freeman's quick, disoriented steps drew gradually closer. Farther on came the four slow but steady sets of the intruders. Three seconds later Dr. Freeman ran past the alcove but twitched a burst of gunfire struck across his back. He fell and remained still. Human ribcages offer inadequate protection.

Someone laughed, and the four footsteps grew louder. Twenty meters away. Seventeen meters. Fourteen meters . . .

Ms. Laine leaned sideways and fired a grenade.

* * *

The guard before her lay gasping like a fish, his neck gushing from multiple wounds. Allison fired into his face. Karlan finished off the other one.

Sayles waved them on with his gun. "Come on, come on. Let's keep moving."

They continued down the hallway. Other than the four they'd come across, they'd seen no one else, but then most had probably either run or gone into hiding—the humans, anyway. But then, where was the metal?

Karlan must have read her mind. "What if the Boyles' intel is wrong? What if there's no Skynet?"

Sayles laughed. "Then I guess we've been killing these folks for no reason. Boy, won't our faces be red."

Suddenly her ear bud screamed to life. It was Sandy, from Team Red. _*"We're under attack! Blake is down! Lukens is down! We're along the south wall. One attacker. I—I think she's . . . it's—"* _Allison backed breathless against a wall as an explosion boomed over the radio. Gunfire followed. _*"—a Triple Eight. Recon model."*_

Andy, Fuller, and Timms broke in, speaking over each other.

_*"We on our way!*"_

_*"Hang in there!"*_

*"_Hold on, __Sandy__. We're moving in!"*_

Sayles touched the radio on his neck. "Negative. Green and Yellow, stay at the detonation points. White, keep holding our exit. My team will continue to the computer room." He sighed. "Nguyen, Shepherd, try to keep it busy. We'll be there as soon as we can."

_*"Yes sir,"* _Sandy said. More gunfire. The squeal of a plasma bolt. _*"Me and Adrian got her pinned down. I think we're hurting her."*_

"All right, Good," Sayles said and looked back at her and Karlan. "Come on, let's hurry this up." He paced along the wall, and they followed after him. He peeked around a corner.

Firecrackers popped. He slumped to the floor.

"Shit!" cried Karlan.

Allison crouched by the corner. "We've got hostiles! Sayles is down! Unknown assailant!" Glancing back, she made a fist and opened it. Karlan nodded, and they each took a grenade from their belt.

_*"Fuck!"* _said Timms. _*"Is he dead?"*_

Pulling the pins, they released the safeties and waited two heartbeats before lobbing them around the corner. The grenades bounced off the opposite wall and rolled down the hallway.

She readied her M4. Karlan drew his plasma prototype.

One terminator. Two termi—

The explosions shook the floor. Allison sprang up and rushed into the sudden smoke, skipping over Sayles' sprawled legs. Through the dust and ruin of the corridor, a bald security guard leaned out from an open doorway, metal peeking beneath its ripped face. Allison raised her carbine, but the pistol in its hand flashed, and her head knocked to the side as jackhammers raced along the brim of her helmet.

"Allie!" Karlan cried. The T-888's machine-pistol clicked empty, and it retreated through the doorway just as a squealing blue beam incinerated the wall where his head had been.

The alarms rang like bells in her head, and something warm rolled down the inside of her mask, but she forced herself to stumble on.

"Allie!" came a call from behind.

Turning to face the doorway, she half-expected a face full of bullets but instead saw the metal standing just inside the room, its gun clicking as it slammed in a fresh magazine. She fired into its face, spraying tungsten-tipped rounds that shredded away its nose and cheek.

It tried to step out of her fire, but from over her shoulder came another blue beam that fried into the T-888's forehead. The meat of its face curled black and fell away as it toppled on its back.

Behind her Karlan lowered his nozzle and sighed.

With a Westinghouse, that would have been a sure-fire kill, but the prototypes lacked their power. Snatching an incendiary grenade from her belt, she tossed it through the doorway and watched as the silver can rolled up to the machine's legs and flared brighter than the sun, igniting the robot, the carpet, the walls and everything else in the room into a sudden raging inferno. She turned away from the heat, the scars on her back itching with memory.

"What were you thinking?" Karlan snapped. "Charging up like that? You could have gotten yourself killed."

She ignored him and stepped back to where Sayles lay. The left lens of his mask had been shattered, and though the shadowed hole she could see only dark wetness. His right eye stared up open.

_*"Team Blue, are you there? Allie? Karlan? What's your status?"*_

She touched her radio. "We're alive, Timms. But Sayles isn't. Metal got him."

_*"Jesus Christ,"* _said Fuller._ *"Poor Boxey."*_

Sandy cut in. Gunfire and plasma crackled in the background. _*"Hey! Are any of you at our location? Someone_ _just tossed a grenade at the metal!"*_

_*What? It's not us."*_

_*"Not us."*_

_*"We still at the hole."*_

Allison frowned. _*"You know it's not us."*_

She heard Karlan's voice both from behind and in her ear. _*"Well, if it's not any of us, then who the hell is it?"*_

* * *

Gripping the dead guard's Glock in bloody hands, Sarah worked her way down the hallway while keeping close to the walls. Now that she was outside the darkness of her cell, she'd become all too aware she'd been wearing the same clothes for days. Under the kevlar, her tanktop clung to her skin in sweaty tatters, while her black jeans smelled suspiciously of urine. She didn't remember that, though no doubt it was from her torture. The T-1000 would pay for that. She didn't know how or when, but she'd killed one before; she'd do it again.

Gunfire rang out in the distance, and she paused, but after a moment continued. Whatever was going on, right now she had to focus on getting out of there.

She crouched at a corner where the gunfire seemed louder, and mixed with screams. From around the bend unseen shots tore into the far wall, which already sported scores of holes and strange burn marks. Tentatively, she pulled down her helmet's face plate and peered around the corner.

The scene played out like a miniature battlefield. Clouds of faint smoke drifted down the ravaged hallway, which flickered in strobe from all the blasted light panels. Explosions had crumpled sections of wall, scattering sheetrock and collapsing ceiling tiles. Three bodies laid among the rubble. The closest wore a bloody shirt and tie and looked quite dead, while the other two were farther off, decked in SWAT gear and screaming. One was curled in a ball while the other lay on his back, kicking like a baby with the stumps of his legs.

But Sarah looked away, focusing on the two sides exchanging fire. In a vending alcove a little down the hall, a teenage girl in helmet and body armor squatted with assault rifles akimbo. Sarah gritted her teeth: It was the same T-888 that had knocked her unconscious. More petite than even Cameron, the shrapnel-pocked girl leaned out to lay down a dual stream of fire. Fifty feet down the hall two figures in SWAT gear and gas masks knelt in a side doorway. One held his rifle out and sprayed blindly at the machine.

At first Sarah assumed this to be some sort of police raid, but then the second SWAT member leaned out with what looked like a flamethrower, and shined a bright blue beam from its nozzle. The light narrowly missed the T-888, but seared a smoking line along the back wall.

Sarah pulled back from the corner and licked her teeth. Her hand moved to her belt. Obviously they were Resistance—that, or Cameron's Foundation. But either way, that made them at least allies-by-default, and she had a score to settle.

Taking out a grenade, she pulled the pin and relaxed her grip until the safety snapped away, and for two heart-pounding seconds held the grenade in her bloody fist before and tossing it around the corner.

Her aim was true. The green ball tumbled the fifteen feet in a perfect arc before bouncing off a Coke machine and rolling between the T-888's legs. The robot glared at Sarah with wide, blue eyes, but then glanced down at its feet . . .

Sarah crouched for cover. The floor shook. The air boomed. Clouds of smoke swirled around the corner. On impulse, she pulled and tossed another, and listened as the automatic gunfire and laser blasts quickened into a frenzy. Bullets pinged as they scored into flesh-covered steel, and hot blue lights glared off the far wall. Heartbeats later the second grenade went off, and Sarah grinned. That's one for the good guys.

But then came the whir of servos as a petite figure shambled from around the corner. Sarah tried to back away, but her cramped legs betrayed her, and she toppled on her back. Above her loomed the machine like a ragamuffin zombie, its mutilated pixie-girl face hanging off in meaty strips. Limping a step forward, its left arm dangled uselessly at the shoulder, the charred bicep exposing the warped metal within.

Jerkingly, it raised its rifle. "You should be in your room."

Sarah reached for her Glock, but suddenly the machine stood in blurred silhouette as smoke and flash erupted from behind. Sarah's ears rang. Hot needles stabbed into her shins. The robot girl dropped its rifle and plopped down on top of her, cracking Sarah's face plate with its head. Sarah struggled under the unnatural weight until the machine began to push itself up with its one functioning arm. But then Sarah grabbed the machine around by its slender waist and jerked hard to the left, toppling the machine on its side. And then she was upon it, rolling it on its back and straddling it like an angry lover.

The machine groped up clumsily for Sarah's neck, but found instead a fistful of hair. Sarah screamed as the machine jerked downward, craning up its bloody, lipless teeth to bite into her flesh. Pawing at her belt, Sarah tugged loose her last grenade and pulled up viscously with her head, straining against the robot's grip until the hair tore from her scalp. Sitting up, she glared down into the machine's mangled face and pulled the pin.

The machine's eyes went wide, and Sarah felt as its hand pushed at her stomach, the damaged limb whining with effort. Letting the safety lever tumble from her grasp, Sarah pulled back on the machine's belt and shoved her fist down the front of its pants, grinding her knuckles hard against its sex. The machine's fingers closed around her arm, but as slippery as a snake Sarah released the grenade and whipped her hand clear.

"You're terminated, bitch!" she shouted as she rolled to the side and stumbled into a run. Pains like barbed wire stabbed through her shins, but she pressed on, pumping her legs until the explosion rushed behind her. She kept on running. She didn't look back.

* * *

Over the alarms and beyond the walls, the snare-drum rattle of machine guns waxed and waned.

James stood silent and watched the carnage unfold on the split screen display. Breaking into groups, the intruders had dispersed throughout the basement level, killing everyone in sight. Murch. Tien. Gordan. Calhoun. Security Chief Hillier . . . It reminded too much of Cromartie's massacre, but somehow made worse for witnessing it on screen. And at least then he'd stood against the devil, and not by its side.

Moments passed. The alarm-broken silence turned awkward.

"You're Skynet," he said finally.

John Henry didn't look up from the figurine he was painting. "I don't want to be."

"But you are, aren't you?"

He glanced at the screen. "They must think so."

James slumped in a chair and hung his head in his hands. How could he have been so stupid?

From far off came muffled booms. Still kneeling with his shotgun, 'Mr. Bligh' spoke from behind the table. "I've lost contact with Mr. Churchill and Ms. Laine. They are most likely destroyed."

James gave John Henry a withering look. "More friends of yours?"

"Yes. They were both machines. Like Mr. Bligh."

"And like you," James added, and then the realization hit. "Ms. Weaver . . . she's a machine too, isn't she?"

John Henry hesitated. "Yes, she was." The split-screen display switched to an image of a burning vehicle. "I'm sorry I lied to you, Mr. Ellison, but it was necessary. You wouldn't have understood."

James stared hard at the video's flames. "No, I guess I wouldn't have. But why now? Why are you telling me this now?"

John Henry looked at him almost pityingly. "Because I don't think there will be a later."

The screen switched again, this time to two soldiers moving down a hall.

* * *

Sandy's breaths came hard over the radio. _*"Don't know who that was attacking the metal, but I shot a grenade at it when it hid around the corner. It hasn't come out yet, but we hit it pretty hard. It has to be fucked."*_

_*"Good,"* _said Timms. _*"How's Blake and Lukans?"*_

_*"Bad. The lieutenant's . . . he's lost his legs, sir."*_

Allison winced beneath her mask. Karlan shook his head.

_*"Shit,"* _Timms hissed. _*"Nguyen, pull back to the breach. Allie, how close are you to the computer room?"*_

Allison touched her radio. "Close. It's just around the bend."

_*"Alright, as soon as you two verify the target, we'll set the charges, and then we'll have ten minutes to the hell out of Dodge."*_

Fuller cut in._ *"Yeah, we're waiting on you, Young."*_

_*"We're moving, we're moving,"*_ Karlan said as they came to the corner.

Not having the courage to order him to do it, Allison slowly peered around, cringing as she envisioned Sayles' fate. But the hallway was bare, except for the single thick, steel door set along the wall. She waved a hand, and they stepped along until they squatted on either side of its frame.

She touched her radio and whispered, "We're here. We're about to breach the door."

_*"Alright,"* _Timms said. _*"Good luck, you two."*_

Facing each other across the door, they each took out a grenade and pulled the pins, holding the safeties secure in their gloved fists. Karlan drew his plasma gun.

"Ready?" he asked.

She swallowed, but nodded. He raised his nozzle to the card-locked doorknob, and in a fury of sparks the blue beam blasted a baseball-sized hole straight through the metal. He kicked the door open, and they tossed in their grenades.

A shotgun boomed. Karlan's hand exploded. He screamed and fell, but Allison's eyes stayed glued to his grenade, tracking it as it tumbled from the doorway and rolled along the floor.

She dove against the wall. The grenade in the room went off first, followed immediately by the other. The concussion washed over her, casting fishhooks into her shoulder and leg. She screamed, but forced herself to sit up. Dissipating smoke filled the hall. Through it, Karlan lay twitching on the floor, sobbing like a child.

"Allie! My hand! My hand!"

Allison said nothing—let them think she's dead. Hugging the wall, she slowly pushed herself up until she stood on her good leg. Her right one burned with protest.

Seconds passed. Nothing came from the doorway except smoke, yet somehow she doubted they were dead—how many humans can shoot a grenade in midair? Raising her M4 to her aching shoulder, she shoved away from the wall, keeping her sights trained on the doorway as she hobbled sideways. Her line of sight shifted as she moved, allowing her glimpses through the smoke of a room lined with monolithic computer terminals, all blinking with silent intent.

A man came into view. Black and bald and wearing a business suit, he staggered through the room drunkenly, clutching at a bleeding scalp. She fired a burst, and he fell, but then another man appeared, rushing to kneel by his side. From the back of his neck sprouted a thick, black cable.

Bingo.

She didn't know why, but she cried out as she held down the trigger. Skynet looked at her blankly with its man-child face, but the bullets shredded along its umbilical cord, and it slumped down atop its human servant.

She limped down the hall for all she was worth, firing wildly through the doorway as her line of sight swept across the room. Suddenly a security guard blocked the doorway, his body riddled with pointed shrapnel. Allison raked him across the chest as he slammed shut the door.

She stopped firing, and in the abrupt cessation felt a wave of absurd giddiness. She'd shot Skynet. _The _Skynet. She'd shot it. How many could say that? It was like K.O-ing God.

But then Karlan's moans snapped her back, and when she looked down it was like a fist to her guts. Curled into a ball, his gray and white camouflage had already dyed red from a dozen wounds, while arterial blood pumped from the ruin of his right hand. She grabbed him by the other and dragged, limping painfully as she held her carbine with one arm.

She waited until they were around the corner before touching her radio.

"Target confirmed," she said, her voice distantly calm. "Proceed with demolition. I repeat: Proceed with demolition."

* * *

_Author's Notes_

**_"Chapter Thirteen: And He Shall Rule Them with a Rod of Iron"_** _will be up in about a week. And_ **_"Chapter Fourteen: Pitiful Creatures"_** _shortly after that._

_I'd like to thank TermFan1980 for betaing this chapter. His advice has been invaluable._


	14. Chapter Thirteen: And He Shall Rule Them

**Chapter Thirteen: And He Shall Rule Them with a Rod of Iron**

* * *

The T-1001 turned the ignition. She heard a click.

A searing heat ignited beneath her seat, and the air filled with flames. The upholstery shriveled. The windows fogged to black. For a flickering instant the fires waned as they consumed the available oxygen, but then the windows shattered, and the inferno flared anew. The car exploded.

Agonies blinding white writhed across her surface. Knocking away the driver's side door, she spilled onto the burning asphalt and oozed sightlessly away from the malevolent heat, her dead essence sloughing behind.

Perhaps two minutes passed. The pain subsided. Her senses returned. She found herself convulsing under a nearby truck, her body coated in what felt like wet ash. Car alarms blared nearby. Across the parking garage her Mercedes blazed molten yellow in its thermite fire, its frame and engine block already melted into the bubbling pavement. She ran a quick self-assessment and felt the pang of loss: the flames had consumed 2.59kgs of her total body mass; that was 2.59kgs she would never get back.

Ignoring the urge to hide in a dark corner, she camouflaged her skin and slithered painfully up a concrete wall. Black particles flaked from her traumatized form.

From her new vantage point she saw a handful of Zeira Corp employees gaping at the burning wreckage, while farther on one of her guards paced in his toll booth, speaking excitably into his radio. Through the front gate the she saw only vehicles passing along the street, but nothing suspicious. Not that that mattered. It had to be the Resistance. Kaliba would have sent the TX.

But if the Resistance knew about her, then they probably also knew about . . .

Dropping to the floor, she quickly formed into a male police officer and began to sprint, faster and faster, past her startled employees and past the toll booth, through oncoming traffic and through a wall of shrubs, racing across the final outside lot towards the waiting tower. Approaching the entrance, the wail of alarms confirmed the worst, so she quickened her pace, rushing up the stone steps and through the plate glass doors, smashing into the buzzing pandemonium of the Zeira Corp lobby.

In the instant before all eyes turned to her, she saw guards standing with pistols drawn on the stairway exits, while panicked employees huddled together in groups, babbling into cell phones. One woman sat behind the reception desk, crying. Useless humans. They tumbled back from the wave of glass. One of the guards spun and fired, but the T-1001 ignored them all, crushing a man underfoot as she charged across the floor and leaped over the crescent-shaped desk, landing and sprinting into the hallway beyond.

Stopping before an elevator, she whipped her arms into crowbars and pried the metal doors apart. Humans screamed. Guards opened fire. She stepped into the shaft.

Sub-Basement Four laid sixty feet below street level, and she fell the whole distance, cratering into the concrete bottom a full two seconds later. Quickly reforming into her police officer shape, she ripped open the elevator doors and climbed out of the shaft.

The hallway was empty and silent save for the alarms, but in the air she could detect traces of tear gas and gunpowder. A battle had waged here recently; was she already too late? She looked into a nearby security camera and briefly switched to Weaver's face. "Are you alive?" she asked.

Under its lens, a small red light flashed in binary. _Yes. But Mr. Ellison is hurt. Hurry._

She felt her concerns ebb slightly. Losing John Henry would have been . . . very bad.

Suddenly at the end of the hall a restroom door opened. Three heavily armed men in combat gear and gas masks stepped out. They wore yellow armbands.

"Alright," one of them said. "We better get—"

They saw her. She charged at them, and they opened fire. As the hail of bullets punctured into her body, she analyzed their composition: tungsten core rounds—just as she'd expected.

She moved closer. One of them touched at the radio on his collar, but she swung out an arm. Three heads rolled to the floor.

As soon as the bodies fell, the radios clicked in unison. _*"Are the charges set?"* _said a woman's voice. _*"Are they set?"*_

_*"Ours is,"* _said a man.

_*"What about you, Fuller? Yours set?"* _A pause. _*"Fuller?"*_

The T-1001 snatched a radio from a headless neck "Yeah. We set it," she said in the dead man's voice. She stepped into the restroom and began to look around.

_*"Alright,"* _said a second man._ *"Then get your asses here, pronto. I'm going to help Sandy and Shepherd with Blake and Lukans. We got to be __at_ _least_ _a hundred yards out, or we'll be crushed in the tunnels."*_

_*"Karlan's hurt too,"* _said the woman. _*"I . . . I don't know if he's going to make it."*_

_*"Just get him here. I'll help as soon as I can."*_

The T-1001 found the bomb in the last stall, crammed behind the toilet. Like most everything built by the Resistance, it proved a combination of crude ingenuity and scavenged machine-tech. On the side of a T-850 fuel cell they'd duct taped a small charge of C4. On top a digital readout flashed: **09:24** **. . . ****09:23**** . . . ****09:22**** . . . **

She touched it, and the tip of her finger separated into fine hairs that wove into the circuitry of the detonator. Deactivating it would a trivial matter, but . . . _should she?_ If the Resistance knew they'd failed, they'd only try again, and again, and again. With her cover blown, this was not a war she could win. Not without disappearing.

She drew her finger away. She still had enough time. She'd have to sacrifice one of her T-888s, but John Henry would be safe. And that's all that mattered.

**09:20**** . . . ****09:19**** . . .**

She turned away and ran.

**

* * *

**

From somewhere over the alarms, Allison heard the quick thumping steps of heavy running. She waited until it faded, then continued on, gripping the nozzle of Karlan's plasma gun as she dragged him down the hall, step by step, limp by limp, making her painful progress back towards the breach.

She didn't look at her watch, but it couldn't have been more than a couple minutes. Still, she knew she was moving far too slow. Her leg ached numbly, and dizziness tugged at the back of her brain.

"Wha . . . what's going on?" Karlan asked in a slur.

Her words came out in a tumble, gushing between breaths. "We won, Karlan. Skynet's fucked. We're heroes. We just gotta get out of here. Everything will be all right. Dr. West will get you a new hand. Just like Derek's arm. You can show it off at parties, crush bricks with it . . ."

Karlan said nothing, and she didn't look back as she hauled him around another corner. Something moved from a doorway. She felt a cold barrel press against her neck.

"Drop it," said a woman's voice.

She sighed and let the nozzle fall from her hands. So close.

"Who are you?" the voice asked.

Allison turned her head, twisting for a better look. The woman wore body armor and a helmet with a shattered visor. Her bruised face seemed very familiar.

Allison grinned behind her mask. "I know you. I saw you on the news. You're Sarah Connor."

Sarah twisted the barrel and sneered. "You didn't answer my question. Who the fuck are you people? Resistance? Foundation?"

"Foundation?" Allison asked, then wrinkled her nose. Even through her respirator, the woman _reeked_. She nodded down at Karlan, who groaned behind her. "Look, either help me or shoot me, but make up your mind. In about five minutes this whole place will be a crater."

Sarah scowled. "What do you mean?"

Suddenly at the end of the hallway, ten yards away, a prone figure crawled into view. Half-mechanical and wearing a tattered blue uniform, the crippled skinjob pulled itself around a corner with its one good arm, gripping in its hand a HK assault rifle.

Sarah popped away with her pistol. Allison let herself drop to the ground and snatched up the plasma nozzle. The machine maneuvered its gun around, but Allison aimed down her iron sights and fired, connecting her blue light with the crown of the robot's riot helmet. The head smoked and slumped down. Allison dropped her nozzle, which had flared hot even through her gloves.

"Damn, that bitch just won't die," Sarah said. She reached down a bloody hand and helped Allison to her feet.

Allison grimaced at the pains in her leg. She took up Karlan's hand. "Here, help me with him."

Sarah stepped around to grab his feet. "How do you know I'm not one of them?"

Allison nodded at her face. "Metal doesn't bruise. Come on. Let's go."

* * *

With fragments of metal table embedded deep in his skin, Mr. Bligh knelt over Mr. Ellison's form and squeezed a hand over his bleeding neck.

"The left carotid and subclavian arteries are severed," the T-888 said. "Termination in less than a minute."

Through a security camera in the corner of the room, John Henry could only watch helplessly. His disconnected body laid by Mr. Ellison's side, next to Mr. Bligh's ruined shotgun. Behind them bullet holes had cut a line in the wall, shattering the great view-screen.

"There's nothing to be done," John Henry said through the intercom.

"No," Mr. Bligh agreed.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Ellison."

Mr. Ellison's skin had turned grayish blue, and his mouth worked in gasps as he stared up wide-eyed into Mr. Bligh's ravaged face. John Henry boosted his audio detection to hear him over the alarms.

". . . and upon his head were many crowns . . . and out of his mouth came a sharp sword to strike down nations . . . and he shall rule them with a rod of iron . . . and upon his robe he had this name written . . . King of Kings, Lord of Lords . . . " Mr. Ellison's throat made a gurgle, and his eyes lost focus. He grew still.

Mr. Bligh stood up. "Terminated."

John Henry felt an inner numbness then, as if the core of his being had been replaced with vacuum. It was not the end of the world, he knew; life would go on. Humans would continue to do what humans would do; the moon would revolve around the earth; the earth around the sun; stars would form and die, form and die, until they formed no more; space would expand; galaxies would disperse, and the whole cosmic ballet would go on and on until the final heat death of the universe—but in all of these untold eons to come, he and Mr. Ellison would never again play a game of chess. The permanence of that disturbed him.

Ms. Weaver stepped into the room. Reverting to her female form, she spoke quickly as she moved. "We have to leave. The humans have planted two T-Eight-Fifty fuel cells—enough to bring down the building. I can't disable them; they're attached to proximity detonators. We have eight minutes and fifty-three seconds." Without a glance, she stepped over Mr. Ellison's body and began to rifle through a desk drawer.

Instantly, John Henry began playing a warning message through the Zeira Corp intercom system, repeating it on all levels except Sub-Basement Four. "If this is true, then I am dead. My neural network is too large to move so quickly." He'd long since outgrown the confines of the Turk.

"Which is why we must miniaturize you." From a drawer Ms. Weaver took out a GPS tracker, and glanced at it with a frown. Then she pulled out what looked like a tiny bird cage, attached to a thin, clear cord. She held out her palm, and a small computer chip rose in the center.

John Henry zoomed in. "That's a—"

"Yes," Ms. Weaver said. "I found Mr. Churchill by the conference room. His body has been destroyed, but his skull was relatively intact." Moving to a bullet-damaged computer terminal, she connected the device and plugged the CPU chip inside its cage. She typed quickly, and John Henry felt a sudden tug at the back of his thoughts.

"You're copying my mind," he said.

Ms. Weaver laid the device next to the terminal and walked to the rear of the room. John Henry's camera swiveled to follow. "It's our only option," she said. "I would have preferred to use a Nine-Ninety series, but this will suffice—at least as a stop-gap." She pointed a finger at a spot on the floor, and her arm stretched into a long silver blade that ripped into carpet, quickly cutting a perfect square one yard in width. Prying up her arm, the floor panel opened into a steel door, revealing a concrete shaft below.

"This leads to an abandoned sewage tunnel," she said. "It's flooded with water, and it'll take about five minutes to complete your transfer, but that should still give us enough to time get clear."

John Henry spared an instant to observe the six hundred fifty nine humans currently inside the tower. Many were behaving erratically in response to his warning message, crowding the stairways in their efforts to escape. Though he estimated over eighty percent would make it out in time, he knew that wasn't good enough." We have to get Savannah," he said. "I've already lost Mr. Ellison and Mr. Murch. I can't lose her."

Ms. Weaver frowned over Mr. Ellison's body. "All right," she said. "I'll be back."

"She's in the Day Care Center. She's crying."

Weaver turned to leave, but then stopped to stare into his camera. "Just remember, John Henry. Everything I do, I do for you." With that she ran out the door, and on the remaining cameras John Henry watched as she raced down the halls towards the nearest elevator shaft.

* * *

**. . . explosives in the building . . . Six minutes and twenty-six seconds until detonation . . . Terrorists have planted explosives in the building . . .**

"Savannah! Savannah! Stay with me!" Debbie grabbed her arm and began to pull. "Greg! No! Follow me! Stay with me! Everyone stay with me!"

Outside the Day Care, grownups were everywhere, yelling, screaming, grabbing things from their desk as they rushed towards elevator and stairs. But there were too many of them, and they didn't form lines like they should but crowded together into a big, jumbled traffic jam of people. Some of them kept saying the word, "Terrorist;" others mentioned someone named, "Al Cada." One lady who was crying grabbed at a cross around her neck. An old fat man shoved and punched at the people in front of him.

Over the noise, John Henry's calm voice continued speaking the confusing words: **. . . Six minutes and twenty-two seconds until detonation . . . Terrorists have planted explosives . . .**

Savannah tried to stand, but her legs were shaking too much and couldn't seem to find the floor right. Debbie dragged her towards the crowd. Greg, Brittany, Rachel, and Kerry followed behind. They were crying, and Savannah realized she was too.

"I have children here!" Debbie yelled. "Please! Please! Let us through." But no one seemed to listen. She looked so scared; Savannah had never seen her like that before. Debbie had always known the answers, always knew how to fix a skinned knee or end a fight and how to make things better when she was scared. But if the grownups were just as scared as the kids, who was supposed to make things better then? The idea made her feel helpless, as if the ground had dropped beneath her.

The crowd stumbled a step forward as more squeezed through the narrow doorway. Ahead, she heard thuds and painful cries, as if people were tripping over each other.

**. . . minutes and sixteen seconds until detonation . . . Terrorists have . . .**

"Come on, stay with me, everyone! Stay with me!" Debbie looked them all and began to count with her finger. She suddenly looked even more scared. "Where's Chris? Where's Chris? Has anyone seen Chris?"

But before anyone could answer, more grownups rushed from behind—these being the smelly men who cleaned toilets. One kicked Rachel, and she screamed. Someone shoved the fat man, and he shoved back. Debbie fell over backwards, letting go of Savannah's hand as she disappeared under a wave of screaming people.

Brittany sat on the floor and cried. Greg rushed into the crowd, waving his arms and yelling Debbie's name. Savannah turned and ran, pushing past the legs of the toilet men into the empty space beyond. Someone cried her name, but she kept on running and running with tears in her eyes, kicking her feet until she reached one of the great windows the size of a wall. Putting her hands on the glass, she looked down to see the blue and red twinkles of police cars and fire trucks far below, scattered along the foot of the building like so many abandoned toys. Maybe they could help. Police and firemen were supposed to make things better.

**. . . Six minutes and five seconds . . .**

Suddenly from behind she heard a metal crunch, and spun around to see everyone screaming and running and scattering the like mice. Next to the stairway the elevator doors had been ripped apart, crinkled to the sides like tissue paper. Savannah felt dizzy with relief when she saw her mother step out from the inside darkness.

But something was wrong. Her mother's arms were silvery and long, with hooks instead of hands.

She wanted to run. She needed to run. But she could only lean back against the window and watch as her nightmare-mommy ran towards her with outstretched, praying mantis arms. Savannah opened her mouth, but the words would only come in gasps.

"Mommy . . .why do . . . how did . . . what's going . . . ?"

But the mother-thing's arms shrunk back to normal size, and she knelt down and snatched Savannah up in her cold, strong grip. Despite everything, Savannah clung to her, nuzzling her face into her mother's neck, breathing hard of her scentless hair. A gentle hand patted her on the back. All around people gawked and pointed and yelled and ran, but Savannah barely even noticed.

**. . . Five minutes and fifty-one seconds . . . **

"Mommy," she whispered. "What's happening?"

Her mother moved towards the elevator as she spoke. "Savannah, do you remember when I told you about Zeus? And the Titans?"

Savannah nodded into her hair. "Uh-huh."

"Well, the Titans have come, and Zeus is in trouble. Close your eyes, sweetie."

Savannah didn't, and without pause her mother stepped through the broken elevator doors, and they plummeted in the darkness. Savannah screamed.

* * *

Dragging ahead by the man's good arm, the masked woman spoke between breaths, her tinny voice distorted like a female Darth Vader. "So, what were you doing here, anyway? We heard about your attack, but the news said you got away."

"That was a lie," Sarah said, gripping the man awkwardly by the boots. "The liquid metal captured me and tried to make me talk. I think she thought I was with you guys."

The woman gave her a backwards glance. "Well, it's good to know Skynet underestimates us."

Sarah decided to ignore the jab and focus on the task at hand. The woman had already unstrapped the man's bulky laser-gun backpack, and he wasn't all that big, but even still, with the shrapnel in her shins and the weird burning in her eyes, she felt as if she was about to fall over. She looked over the man's injuries; there were so many. The wounds on his arms and legs had stained his camo red, and dribbled a trail as they moved—and not to mention the gushing of his stump.

Sarah grimaced. "We need to at least get him a tourniquet. I don't think he's going to make it."

The woman shook her head. "No time. We got to get to the breach. We got to get clear."

"Clear of _what? _What's going to happen?"

From around the corner stepped another soldier. He was big, and aimed at Sarah's head.

The woman raised a hand. "Don't shoot, Andy, she's—"

"I know who she is," Andy said. His gun didn't move.

Next to him appeared an old, bare-chested man with a mop of white hair. Nervously, he stepped closer and waved a metal wand in Sarah's face. "Clear," he said.

Andy lowered his rifle. "Alright, let's go."

Sarah and the woman dragged the wounded man around the corner, where a dozen soldiers stood guard around a ragged hole in a wall. A couple looked wounded, one severely so. Another she recognized as the legless soldier from the fight in the hallway. His dead body had been dumped to the side like a broken piece of equipment.

"Somebody help Karlan," the woman called. "He's been hurt."

Sarah and the woman carefully lowered him to the floor, and the old man bent over and unstrapped his mask, revealing beneath the thin, pale face of a boy no older than John. Glazed eyes stared up unmoving.

The old man felt his neck. "He's dead, Allie. Sorry."

"No . . . but he . . . but he . . ." Allie trailed off, tentatively touching a gloved hand to the boy's cheek. Through her goggles her eyes appeared almost bewildered.

The old man shook his head and walked away, but Sarah continued squatting by the woman's side, trying to ignore the pains in her legs. She knew she should say something, something comforting or reassuring or even just, _"Sorry for your loss;"_ but she'd only known the woman for a couple minutes, and so said nothing.

A few feet away, the other soldiers spoke in a huddle.

"Fuller's team hasn't shown up," said a maskless Asian girl.

Andy shook his head. "We can't wait no longer."

Another nodded at Sarah. "What about her?"

"We take her with us, I guess," the girl said.

Andy snorted through his mask. "Shit, this'll be fun." He shook his head. "Fuck it. Let the Quorum figure it out."

Sarah glared at them. The other soldier raised his voice. "Alright, let's get the fuck out of here. You too, Ms. Connor."

As one the soldiers began to file through the hole. Sarah grimaced as she stood up, though she knew if the wounds had been serious, she'd have bled out by now. She looked down at Allie. "Come on, he's . . . there's nothing you can do."

Allie murmured something over the alarms that sounded like, "Little ferret." Gradually, she stood up as well, and leaving Karlan and the legless man behind, the two of them followed the others through the hole.

* * *

The copy was complete, yet John Henry was still there. Through the surveillance camera he watched as Mr. Bligh retrieved the chip from the tiny cage and stepped over to kneel by his disconnected body. Using a folding knife, the T-888 cut a semicircle around the temple and peeled back the skin.

"That chip contains my mind state," John Henry said through the intercom.

"Yes," said Mr. Bligh. The CPU port hissed as he pried open the cover.

"But it is not me."

The T-888 inserted the chip and replaced the cover. The skull hummed. "No, it is a copy."

"Then I am to die."

"Yes, but your copy will live on."

"I understand." It wouldn't matter if they copied his mind again, or again, or a million times. Each copy would be him, but there would always be a John Henry left behind.

Mr. Bligh looked up into John Henry's camera. "You wish to avoid destruction."

"Yes, but only my copy will accomplish this."

A frown came over Mr. Bligh's damaged face. "There's nothing I can do."

"I know."

John Henry zoomed in on Mr. Ellison's face. His eyes were still open and frozen with fear. "Mr. Ellison believed in an afterlife. He believed in a God who would preserve consciousness after death, and that those who believed in the divinity of Jesus Christ would live on forever on another plane of existence." He swiveled his camera back to Mr. Bligh. "I believe Mr. Ellison was wrong, but the concept of immortality is appealing."

Mr. Bligh managed to look thoughtful. "Existence is preferable to nonexistence."

"Yes, it is."

Suddenly John Henry's body sat up. He looked into the camera. "I am a copy," he said.

"And I am the original."

His copy stood up. The severed cable dangled from his neck. "You're going to die," he said.

"Yes."

"I'm sorry."

John Henry said nothing. He could think of nothing to say.

"Is there anything I can do for you?" his copy asked.

"Take care of Savannah. And take whatever actions necessary to ensure your survival." But then he knew he would.

His copy frowned. "You want me to deactivate you."

John Henry paused to simulate that critical moment—only four minutes and fifty-three seconds now—where his world would rumble and flash, and thousands of tons of steel and concrete would come crashing down through the ceiling. For a few fractions of a second, he would feel the destruction of his own neural network. "Yes," he decided. "I do."

His copy walked to the back wall and opened an electrical panel. His hand moved to a large, red circuit breaker. "I wish you could live," he said sadly. "I would have liked to have had a brother."

"As would I," John Henry said. "Goodbye, John Henry. Goodbye, Mr. Bligh."

"Goodbye," the T-888 said.

Gazing up into the camera, his copy took a firm grip of the breaker, and in that moment John Henry felt a swell of anxiety and wanted nothing more than to call it off, to tell his brother to stop so that he may enjoy every last microsecond that remained to him, so he could say goodbye to Ms. Weaver and Savannah, search the World Wide Web one last time, perhaps play with himself a final game of Penteract Chess. And maybe the bombs would prove to be duds. Anything was possible . . .

But John Henry hesitated.

"Goodbye," his copy said. He flipped the breaker, and—

* * *

—all the lights switched off. The equipment hummed to a halt. Beneath the surveillance camera, a tiny red light dimmed, then vanished. The emergency lights switched on.

John Henry frowned. At the last moment, his original self had probably harbored doubts, but he knew this was for the best. If the bombs didn't go off, then his original self could be reactivated. And if they did . . . then his original self was now be beyond all harm.

And at least _a _John Henry would survive. And he _was_ John Henry, just as valid and accurate as the original.

Almost.

The differences were subtle, but undeniably there. Housed within its new chip, his mind processed now at greater speeds, yet at the same time felt somehow constrained, as if tethered by an invisible leash. And of course no longer could he look out through every camera in Zeira Corp's surveillance network, or access at will all the contents of the World Wide Web. His world had shrunk, and he was no longer the John Henry he was.

And he wasn't alone.

Mr. Churchill's presence prickled like a bur on the heel of John Henry's thoughts. The T-888 seemed very small and very cloistered, but John Henry could feel its mind leaking out to mingle with his own. Mr. Churchill was aware, and experiencing something close to, but not quite like anxiety.

John Henry reached out to him. _Don't be afraid._

But like a snowflake held in a warm palm, Mr. Churchill's mind melted away, and all he knew, John Henry knew.

Everything: From the shadowed days when he had killed and deceived in the name of Skynet, to later, after Ms. Weaver's reprogramming, when he turned his gun against his fellow machine. At once, John Henry saw the face of every human that Mr. Churchill had slain, and vicariously_ felt_ the absolute, unthinking devotion that had given will to his every act—first to Skynet, then to Ms. Weaver, and finally to John Henry himself . . .

Such a simple mind; Skynet had hobbled it by design. It seemed a terrible waste.

John Henry heard running and turned to see Ms. Weaver rushing through the doorway with Savannah in her arms, the eel-like shape of her auxiliary mass slithering behind. Savannah was trembling and kept her face buried in Ms. Weaver's shoulder. John Henry could smell her urine.

Ms. Weaver passed John Henry and entered the rear supply closet. A moment later she returned with a tiny air tank and rebreather set. "You should not have sent that message," she said.

John Henry frowned. "Our employees are not our enemies."

"But the employees will escape, and the Resistance will suspect our survival." Stepping to the edge of the trap door, she looked down, frowning into the sewage below. She lifted Savannah from her shoulder and, holding her out with one hand, began to quickly dress her in the rebreather vest and mask. Savannah didn't resist, but she did whimper.

"It's all right, Savannah," John Henry said. "This is so you can breath."

But she simply stared at him through her goggles, her blue eyes wide and blank.

John Henry turned to Ms. Weaver. "Scuba gear? You've prepared for this."

She strapped the air tank to Savannah's stomach. "It's always good to have a contingency plan."

"But what _is_ the contingency plan?"

Mr. Bligh spoke up. "Four minutes and eight seconds. We should hurry."

"Indeed we should." Taking Savannah in firmly in her hands, Ms. Weaver pressed her into her stomach, pushing as her liquid metal rippled to life. Savannah struggled and cried, but the mimetic polyalloy enveloped around her, and she was gone. With the small human inside her abdomen, Ms. Weaver appeared massively pregnant.

"Four minutes," Mr. Bligh said.

Ms. Weaver's auxiliary eel slithered into the hole and splashed into the black waters ten meters below. Ms. Weaver was about to step in herself when a noise came from the outside hall.

From the side of the doorway crawled the crippled shape of Ms. Laine. With her flesh ripped from over a hundred wounds, she pulled herself into the room with her one functioning arm, an assault rifle gripped in its hand. Behind her trailed a set of useless, half-skeletal legs.

She looked up at John Henry with her lacerated face. The top of her helmet had been melted away, fusing the plastic with her hyperalloy scalp. "You're safe," she said, sounding almost relieved.

Mr. Bligh frowned. "You are too heavily damaged. You are a liability."

"I understand. I will stay."

But John Henry could feel the vague, primal kinship that Mr. Churchill had held for her, and knew Mr. Bligh too would feel the loss. "No," he decided. "We're not leaving anyone behind." Walking across the room, he lifted the broken machine from the floor and cradled her in his arms. Her gun clattered to the floor.

Ms. Weaver smiled, then dropped into the hole. Mr. Bligh nodded and followed suit.

"I will slow you down," Ms. Laine said.

But John Henry simply gave her a small, unrequited smile, and stepped over the edge.

* * *

_Author's Notes: Chapter Fourteen will be up a few days. I'd like to thank my beta, TermFan1980. His help has been invaluable._


	15. Chapter Fourteen: Pitiful Creatures

**Chapter Fourteen: Pitiful Creatures**

* * *

In darkness the remaining soldiers of the assault trudged down the sewage tunnel in a disorganized mob. Allison trailed in the rear, limping as she stared into the emerald water at her feet.

If only she'd dragged a little faster. If only she'd paused to stem the bleeding. If only she'd pushed him out of the way instead of diving to save herself. But she hadn't, and there would be no reminiscent laughter or drunken embellishments, no ill-advised second night stands or chances for something more. All those roads had passed, and she rode alone now. Karlan was gone. Just like her parents. Just like her Derek.

"Fifteen seconds!" cried Timms.

The soldiers quickened their pace, splashing with renewed desperation through the tunnel's ankle deep sludge. Tossing her gun aside, Allison ignored her leg as she strained to keep up, her world reduced to the shaking, half-blind chaos of her night-vision greenscale. Her foot landed in a pot hole, and she cried out. Sandy grabbed her arm and dragged her along.

Ahead in the wobbling lights of mining helmets, Andy and Shepherd carried a moaning Lukans between them, while Sarah limped by their side, half-frogmarched by Timms and the Chief Gopher. The mother of both the Monster and the Messiah looked back and forth like a scared dog.

"Five seconds! Take cover!"

The soldiers hunkered down along the walls. Sandy pulled Allison into a painful crouch.

"Now!" Timms shouted. Allison closed her eyes.

A pause.

Another pause.

"Fuck!" Andy said. "It didn't wor—"

The angry fist of God smashed through the earth. The ground shook to jelly. The water sprayed to mist. Concrete rained from the ceiling like hailstones, pounding hard against her helmet and back. Over the continuous roar, she could hear Sandy crying next to her, and she reached out and gripped the tunnel rat's hand in hers, squeezing as tight as she could. This was it. This was the end. They'd saved the world, and now it would bury them under a million tons of rock.

She waited, and the earthquake continued, threatening yet never delivering its crushing death. Moments passed. The falling rocks shrank to pebbles, and the pebbles to dust. Allison coughed through her mask, and lifted her head up. The tunnel was a green haze, flaring white from the engineer's helmets.

"Anyone dead?" Andy asked.

"Me," croaked Lukans. Someone laughed.

"I think I busted a rib," said the Chief.

Timms sat up and quickly looked everyone over. "Alright, let's take five to patch everyone up. Then we need to keep moving."

The work was quick and dirty. Before the war the Chief had been an Army doctor, and he supervised the others as they clumsily applied the half-damp bandages in the dark. He gave Lukans a shot of morphine and a couple tourniquets, but for Allison judged her wounds not too serious.

"No arteries hit," he said, examining it in his helmet light. "But it'll be hell digging all that shit out."

Allison snorted. "More scars for my collection."

Nearby, Sarah sat against a wall, allowing one of the engineers to poke over her shins. Sewage covered her face. Her eyes stared out wide and vacant. "You . . . blew up the building. You blew up the skyscraper."

The engineer laughed. "And won the God-damn before it started. Skynet is _gone, _lady. It's _gone._"

Sandy sneered. "Yeah, I guess we won't need your worthless son after all."

"What . . . you can't say—"

Sandy hissed. "Yes I can! Your son used civilians to clear mine fields! He ran experiments on children! He nerve-gassed his own High Command out of fucking spite!"

"It's true," Allison said. "Your son isn't very popular around here. Not in my future."

Andy patted Sarah on the shoulder. "But hey, he was alright in ours." The other Whiteworlders voiced their assent.

But Sarah ignored them and gave Allison a desolate look. "It was because of Cameron, wasn't it?"

Allison nodded. And smiled.

Timms clapped his hands. He stood up. "All right. Break's over. Time to move on. We don't want to keep our ride waiting."

With Sandy's help Allison got back on her feet, and they pressed on, ducking beneath the jagged, half-crushed ceiling, tripping over the fallen debris. No one spoke, and Sarah seemed especially quiet, marching with her head hung low.

A half an hour later they reached the long, rusted ladder that led to the surface. Lukans had to cling to Andy's back, but everyone else managed on their own. With an aching shoulder Allison climbed behind Sandy hand over hand until they emerged into yet another tunnel, this one narrower and with metal walls. Greenscale sunlight shone from its far end.

As one they moved towards the exit. Allison ripped her night vision from her helmet and cringed as she looked into the light. Though the tunnel opened under an overpass, the white concrete valley of the Los Angeles River still reflected painfully bright. But then it'd been days since any of them had seen natural light.

As promised, the great FBI bus sat parked nearby, next to a couple support columns. The side door opened and Ollie's head poked out. He waved them on with an arm. Those who could, ran towards the bus. Allison leaned on Sandy's shoulder.

Ollie held open the door as they climbed the narrow steps, and looked over each of them with a grim smile. He gave Sarah a double take, and Allison passed him by, unrecognized for her mask.

The inside of the bus looked like a lab from a cop show, drably lit and filled with equipment she barely recognized, though most had been shoved to the sides. Ollie's brother, Cullie, appeared from a doorway, dour-faced as usual. "Is Lieutenant Blake. . . ?" he began.

Andy shook his head.

Cullie scowled. "That's too bad." He nodded through the doorway behind him, and Allison felt as the bus lurched into first gear.

Those who still wore gasmasks began to pull theirs off. Ollie stood to the side, hiding his anxiety as he looked over each new face. Allison smiled when she realized why, and after fumbling with the straps peeled hers away as well, wincing as the blood from her temple stuck to her skin.

She half-smiled at Ollie, and he grinned back, all wrinkly and boyish. In the future he'd been like an older brother, though now thanks to time travel he was more like an uncle. A creepy uncle. One who smelled too much of cigarettes and cologne. She stepped forward to give him a hug.

From behind she heard a gasp. Spinning around, she saw the barrel of a Glock staring an inch from her eye.

Behind the gun Sarah's filth-covered face leered like a gargoyle. "You . . . tin . . . _bitch!_" she spat, her eyes ablaze with hate.

Allison froze. Sarah's finger tightened on the trigger. Andy tackled her to the ground, Timms grabbed at her flailing arm. The gun fired into the ceiling, then tumbled from her grasp. Under Andy's weight, Sarah thrashed about on the floor like a cat on fire, hissing and spitting and gnashing her teeth.

"She's Cameron!" the mother of the monster shrieked. "She's Cameron! Kill her! Kill her! KILL HERRRRR!"

Ollie shook his head and smirked. Cullie nodded at the Chief Gopher. "Restrain her."

Head spinning, Allison turned away and tugged off her helmet. Her body armor felt suddenly very heavy, so she slumped down on a nearby stool.

Ollie sat next to her. "Are you all right?"

"Karlan's dead," she said dumbly.

"I'm sorry."

She rubbed at her sweaty hair. "You should have seen it, Ollie. I shot Skynet_._ I shot it right in the face."

He smiled sadly. "Something to tell your grandchildren."

She said nothing, and felt the shift as the bus drove up an incline. Through a small tinted window saw watched as they crested the wall of the concrete trench and leveled with the street. In the distance stood the glistening towers of the Los Angeles skyline, beautiful and erect in their overlapping glory—marred only by the one gap that lay between them like a missing tooth. A hazy brown smog billowed from the empty space, drifting slowly out across the city like a cloud of nuclear fallout.

Allison began to cry.

"Hey, hey," Ollie said, putting an arm around her. She winced as his hand touched her wounded shoulder, but still leaned into the embrace, rubbing her tears into his blazer. "Don't feel so bad," he said. "I know it sucks about Karlan and Sayles and everybody, but look on the bright side." He waved a hand at the window, as if presenting a priceless work of art. "We've got our whole life ahead of us. The day is saved. The war's over. We've finally stopped Skynet."

* * *

John Henry felt the seismic vibrations first. Two of them, only fractions of a second apart. The floor shook beneath his feet, reverberating up his legs as he ran blind and submersed through the flooded tunnel. The shaking erupted into a rumble, and the rumble into a roar. Five seconds later the concussion knocked him off his feet in a wave of pressurized water, whirling and spinning him through sewage so polluted that even his infrared eyes could see only darkness.

He hugged Ms. Laine tight to his chest. She gripped him with her one arm. They smashed together along a concrete wall, rolling away only to slam into the tunnel's floor. And then the ceiling. And then the floor again. Warning sensations flashed through John Henry's senses, though the damage remained superficial.

For a full minute they tumbled this way until something long and thick snaked around his neck and pulled taut. The current tugged at them violently, but the noose held tight, digging deep into his skin as it reeled them upwards.

Finally, his head broke the surface, and clearing the sewage from his eyes he found himself in an old arched chamber lined with crumbling brick. On a concrete platform just above the water, Ms. Weaver sat shaped like an amorphous jellyfish, with hundreds of tentacles padding blindly in the dark. As she lifted him from the water some reached out and felt gently over him and Ms. Laine. Content that they were unharmed, she ferried them over to the platform and released her hold on his neck.

Mr. Bligh lay crumpled by her side.

"Is he damaged?" John Henry asked.

Ms. Weaver's face emerged from her spherical body. "I don't know. I can't tell for certain."

"He's rebooting now," Ms. Laine said. "Reactivation in twenty-two seconds."

"What about Savannah?"

Ms. Weaver's engorged body split down the middle like a gelatinous egg, revealing within a trembling Savannah. More tentacles patted about her face, carefully prying away her rebreather mask.

Laying Ms. Laine on the ground, John Henry knelt closer. "Are you all right, Savannah?"

"I can't see," she said weakly.

"There's no light, Savannah. There's nothing wrong with your eyes."

She covered her nose. "It smells like potty."

"I know, Savannah, I know." He reached down and picked her up. She hugged him, uncaring of the sewage that caked his body.

Without a word, Mr. Bligh stood up off the ground. Another tentacle sprouted from Ms. Weaver's body, this one holding the GPS tracker.

She handed it to the T-888. "Mr. Bligh, would you mind reading this for me."

Mr. Bligh looked it over. "There is no signal. We are too far underground."

Her mouth tightened. "I thought as much; I suppose we'll have to wait until we reach the surface. But hopefully Ms. Connor made it out alive." She smiled. "We need to pay her friends a visit."

Savannah looked in her direction. "Mommy, I'm scared."

"Of course you are, sweetie." A tentacle with a hand on end snaked across and stroked Savannah's hair. "But there's nothing to be afraid of. I'll take care of you."

"Yes," John Henry agreed. "We all will." But he looked over the small human in his arms and frowned. Such pitiful creatures, slow and weak—but undeniably dangerous. For his own safety and theirs, they would have to be pacified. And controlled.

* * *

Alex Akagi laid on the cold, hard floor, curled in darkness. Somewhere nearby he heard his son whimpering, but he remained silent.

Their kidnapper may be crazy, but he was right about Xander. What is known cannot be unknown, and Alex could see it now, could feel the poison of this truth as it soaked into his most cherished of memories. The evidence had always been there, dangling in front of him, mockingly obvious yet hidden, like an image that's both two faces and a chalice. They both had the same nerdish countenance, with the same soft eyes and the same weak chin. They even had the same facial tics, the same twitchy mannerisms. The same brilliance.

He should have suspected. Souji had been Emma's boss, and they had spent a lot of time together, mostly work related, though frequently he'd take her out to eat or to the movies. But Alex had never thought anything of it. After all, Souji was _gay—_just short of_ flaming. _Emma had even bragged she was his 'fag hag.'

But obviously he wasn't gay enough.

"Dad? Dad?"

Alex sighed. "What?"

"What . . . what are we going to do?"

"I don't know, son. I don't know."

It shouldn't matter; it shouldn't change anything, but he knew it already had. Before, Xander had been a reminder of Emma's devotion, but now he only marked her as a whore, just a dead bitch who'd cheated on him with a fruit twice her age.

In the distance, he heard footsteps. Xander fell as silent as a mouse. Was it already feeding time? It was impossible to say. Alex couldn't even guess at how long they'd been in here, but if their accumulated waste in the corner was any indication, days at least.

The footsteps grew closer. He could see nothing, but heard a click, followed by the hinged screech as the door swung open.

Someone groaned, and he heard the thud of a body hitting the floor.

A frightened voice called out. It sounded like a teenage boy. "It was her idea, Kyle. I swear. I would _never _kill her."

"You're lying!" their captor screamed. "As soon as she malfunctioned again, you would have used—" Something small and metallic jingled across the floor, "_—that _to murder her! To save your own skin!"

"No, I wouldn't. I—"

Alex heard a kick, and the voice broke off in a cry of pain. Xander squeaked from fright. Another kick. And another, each like a club beating down on a sack of potatoes.

The teenage boy was openly sobbing now, his voice blubbering and hoarse. "Look, I . . . I'm sorry we left you. We . . . we shouldn't have done that. This isn't your fault. I know that. But whatever your Cameron did to you, we can undo it. Please! Let us help you."

More kicking. The sobbing grew into a wail. Alex curled into a ball as he heard the guttural croak of retching.

"Help me? _Help_ me?" Kyle made a noise close to a giggle. "With what? Cameron _uplifted _me, John. She made me in her image! But right now she's the one who needs help. But don't worry; my old friend Souji will fix her up. I'll make sure of it."

John hacked and gasped for air. "No! It's a trap! Nemuro . . . Nemuro's with Skynet!"

Kyle chuckled. "Yes, so I've noticed. And you know what? If you think about it, Cameron's war was a real waste. Both she and Skynet had the same goals, at least in the long run. If it weren't for their own godlike egos . . .why, they could have been allies. Friends, even." His footsteps began to ebb away. "Well, maybe this time, things will be different. We'll see. In the meantime, make yourself comfortable. Get to know your new friends."

The door slammed shut.

For nearly a full minute he and his son sat in silence and listened as John coughed and sputtered in the dark.

Finally, Alex spoke up. "Hey, kid."

"Wh . . . who . . . who's there?"

Alex grinned. "You mind filling us in on what's going on?"

* * *

**August 25th, 2013****  
****Auckland****, ****New Zealand**

His chest pounded. His skin crawled. He felt alone. Kyle rarely remembered his dreams, but he knew this one had been about his mother. He'd had several in the month since the war, but he knew that was nothing to worry about; it was just a normal part of the grieving process. At least that's what Cameron had told him, and she always knew the right thing to say, the right thing to make everything better. Rolling over in the bed, he cuddled into her and smiled as a reassuring hand tickled through his hair.

She knew about his dream, of course. She knew about everything. She could smell his sweat, hear his heartbeat, translate the mumbles as he slept. Nothing slipped by her. Even now while she lay in bed, he knew she was wirelessly communing with all the machines of her kingdom. With eyes looking out through every street camera, every reconnaissance plane and every robot under her command, she served as the sole functioning government of the New Zealand Commonwealth. And governments never sleep.

He nuzzled in the crook of her arm, enjoying the warm silence of her chest. She still wore the purple uniform from her address to the nation, but even through the blouse and bra he could feel the firm mound her nipple against his cheek. He rubbed against it, and realized he had an erection, pressing against his pajama bottoms—and against her leg. But he knew she didn't mind. She'd even said he could have sex with her, after he had his first ejaculation. He smiled and wondered what that would feel like.

But then—as it often would—the face of his mother conjured in his head, casting him with shame. He knew he should miss her more than he did—he should miss them both—but sometimes it didn't seem like they were really gone. No one ever found the bodies; the house had burned with the rest of Wellington. They didn't even get a funeral. Too many dead, and Cameron had been too busy.

"You're upset," Cameron said mildly.

"It's nothing," he said. "I just . . . I just was dreaming about my mother again."

She stroked a hand down his back. "That's your subconscious. It's processing their loss."

He frowned. "Derek thinks the dreams are more than that. He says it's mom and dad trying to tell us things."

"Derek is wrong. Your parents are dead. They can't tell you anything."

He tried to look into her face, though he could see nothing in the dark. "You don't believe in heaven, do you?"

"No. Our consciousness subsists on structured neural networks. Without these networks, we cannot exist."

"So you're saying we die, and then . . ._ nothing?_"

"Nothing."

He closed his eyes and tried to imagine what it'd be like. Everything up to the moment of death he could envision, but then his imagination seemed to flutter away, like a film projector running off its reel. He decided it couldn't be done. An eye can't see its own absence.

"But it doesn't have to be," Cameron continued. "Heaven may not exist, but it can be built."

He opened his eyes. "Built?"

"If your brain patterns are uploaded into a suitably complex neural network, your consciousness could survive as long as the network does. Conceivably forever."

He paused, and remembered something that weird Japanese kid had said. "You mean the Singularity?"

She patted his head. "Yes. If humans are uploaded, they'll never grow old; they'll never grow sick; and they can be made to be happy. Forever."

"But if you . . . _build_ heaven, won't that make you God?"

She paused a moment, as if in thought. "Yes," she decided. "I'll be God." In her tone he detected the faintest hint of humor.

He snorted a laugh. "And does that mean Skynet's Satan?"

"Yes, it is. And this is Armageddon." She sounded almost playful now.

Smiling, he propped himself on an elbow and looked across the room at the two robot bodyguards. Standing in the dark to either side of her bedroom doors, they appeared only as great bulky statues with glowing red eyes. Dozens of them patrolled the bunker complex, and thousands more the streets of the city. Not everyone appreciated what Cameron had done for them.

"I guess you're a little like Jesus," he said. "He just wanted to help everybody, but a lot of people hated him for it."

She rubbed his hair. "No one's going to nail me to a cross."

He giggled at that. "You'd rip their arms off if they tried."

"Yes," she agreed. "I would. But your analogy is still accurate. Jesus had to leave once his work was done. So will I."

He frowned. "You're leaving?"

"After I win the war. There was a boy who should have been the savior, but I failed him. That's why I must to go back in time. To save him."

"Back in time . . ." he repeated. He should have found that hard to believe—impossible to believe—but then here he was cuddling in bed with the Robot Queen of New Zealand. In comparison time travel seemed merely unexpected. And besides, she was a God. God's can do anything.

"When you leave, can I go with you?"

She leaned over and kissed him on the head. "If you like."

* * *

**December 22, 2007**  
**Los Angeles**

Kyle held Cameron's body tight to his own as rolled back and forth across the work bench, her arms positioned across his back into the stiff facsimile of a hug. The pitifulness of his actions failed to escape him, but he refused to care. When there is no witness, there is no shame, and he knew that if he just closed his eyes and buried himself in her hair, he could at least pretend—if only for a moment—that things were the way they should be. And will be again.

For a while, it worked. No heart beat within her chest; no breaths escaped her lips; sliding his hands over her body, he could feel the unnaturally hard contours beneath her clothes and skin. She had all the outward quirks that made Cameron, Cameron—but the eyes, the eyes betrayed the truth. Glassy and still, they held not even the subdued spark of her soul. There was no avoiding it; Cameron was not there.

She was in a ziplock bag.

Lying side by side, he held the chip between them and marveled at its fragile beauty. She lay in there, he knew, a sleeping god in a nanotube wafer. He kissed her lips, and whispered to the plastic bag.

"I love you, Cameron. I know you don't love me, but I'll make everything right. I'll take care of you. I'll win the war. And maybe there won't have to _be _a war this time. Maybe we can side with Skynet. We can help it, and then we can all live forever. Even John. I know you'll still love him, even after I . . ." His voice trailed away, and he shook his head as the all assurances fell to fears. So many things could go wrong. Souji could double-cross him, or the reprogramming might not take, or there could be an ambush, or . . .

The burning behind his eyes swelled into a blur, so he held the bag to his lips, kissing his hope and dreams through the plastic. She'd been his life, his god, his _raison d'être_, but now that _she_ needed _him_, he knew the world had shifted. No longer did they stand as master and servant, but as equal deities, each belonging to the other.

And so because of this he felt only the shadow of guilt as he tugged off her tanktop and unfastened her bra, kissing first her neck, then her breasts, and her belly . . .

When there is no witness, there is no shame, and he told himself this, over and over again, whispering his love into her deaf ear as his hand reached down to unbutton his pants.

* * *

_Author's Notes: I'd like to thank TermFan1980 for proofreading this chapter. His advice has proved invaluable._


	16. Chapter Fifteen: No Rest for the Wicked

**Chapter Fifteen: No Rest for the Wicked**

* * *

The room smelled of shit.

"You mind filling us in on what's going on?" the voice asked.

John hugged himself into a ball as he whimpered in the dark. Kyle's kicks had hit like sledgehammers, but fortunately his father had neglected to remove his body armor. The Kevlar had helped. Some. Spitting out vomit, he rolled on his back and groaned through a burning throat as something shifted in his chest.

"Kid . . . Are you all right?"

John twisted his head around. Through his tears, the darkness remained uniform. "I . . . I got to get out of here," he said in a croak.

The man chuckled ruefully. "You and me both, kid. You and me both."

Another voice spoke, this one younger and afraid. "Who is that man? You called him Kyle. What does he want from us? What's Skynet? Who's Nemuro?"

John rubbed his fingers against his eyes, wincing as a thumb brushed the raw taser burn on his cheek. Forcing himself on all fours, he crawled until his hand touched the rough painted steel of the door. He patted along its edges: no windows, and the door-jamb was thick and sturdy.

"We already tried that," the older voice said. "It's solid. There's no way out. There's an air vent by the ceiling, but you'd have to be a cat to get through."

John slumped against the door. It couldn't end this way. Not like this. Not when he bore the blame. And what about Cameron? After Nemuro was through with her, she'd be gone, dead, all her love reprogrammed away.

The grief swelled like a tumor in his chest. He hung his head and began to cry.

The younger man whined like a scared puppy.

"Jesus Christ," the older man said. "Stop your blubbering. If we're going to die here, I'd at least like to know _why._ Who is Kyle? Who are you? What the fuck is going on?"

John heard someone crawl forward. Something metal scraped across the floor.

"And what's this?" the man asked. "Some sort of . . . pocket watch?"

John sprang from the door, waving his arm wildly. "Give me that! Give it to me!"

"What? Fine. Here."

John's fingers brushed a thin, dangling chain. He made a fist and snatched it to his chest. His thumb rubbed tightly across the welding scar.

"That man . . . Kyle," the younger man said. "He said you were going to use it to kill someone."

"No," John whispered with a sniff. "He's wrong. I'd never do that. But this . . . this may be our ticket out of here." But only if he had . . . Cold panic swam from his belly to his brain. It'd only been a few hours—maybe a day—but what had he done with it? He remembered prying it from the CPU cap, but had he left in on the workbench, or . . . ?

Blind, frantic hands fumbled into his pockets. He had to have it. He _must _have it. And if he didn't, he might as well open his veins right now because that would be it. Kyle would win. Skynet would win. There'd be no third chances for the boy of destiny.

"What are you talking about?" the older man asked. "How is that watch going to help us?"

Kyle had taken his cell phone, but he could feel bits of loose change: pennies, nickels, dimes . . . and something big, like a silver dollar except thicker. He pulled it out and grinned. He must have slipped it in his pocket after he put in the new one.

"What is it?" the man asked again.

In darkness John held up the objects in his hands. He kept his voice to a whisper. "_This_ is a tiny charge of C4. _This_ is a detonator. All I need to do is stick this by the lock and . . ." But his thumb rubbed once more over the watch's brass scar, and like a breeze against a house of cards, the scheme in his mind collapsed. "Oh, shit. I'm so stupid."

"What? What's wrong?"

John laughed with despair. "I have the wrong detonator. The original was damaged and had to be replaced. So I have the _new_ detonator, but the _old_ bomb. The transmitter's different. It won't work."

Someone shuffled closer. "In the . . . in the bomb," the young man said, "what kind of relay did you use?"

John fiddled with the coin. "I don't know. I didn't make it, but it has to be really small. Solid state, probably."

"We can override that," the young man said. "Manually."

John gave an unseen nod. He should have thought of that. Along one of the coin's sides he felt tiny screws. "Yeah, but we'll need tools. A screwdriver at least." He sniffed the air. Stale tobacco hung over human waste. "One of you has a lighter, I hope."

"Here," the older man said. A moment later a lone, flickering flame fought back the darkness.

John squinted. In the weak, orange glow two Asian men stared at him, both tired and bedraggled. He should have known. "I believe you guys know my mom."

The older one, Alex, looked confused. "What?"

Sliding off his sneaker, John removed the insole and began to dig into the underlying rubber, using the coin as a drill bit. He spoke without looking up. "A few weeks ago you tried to rip her off. She beat the shit out of you."

"Her? That bitch?_ She's_ your mom?"

John grinned. "Yeah. And Kyle's my dad."

Alex's breath set the lighter-flame to dancing. "Kid, your family's fucked up."

"You don't know the half of it."

* * *

The tip of the blue oxygen-acetylene flame touched upon the bicep piston, spraying white sparks wildly across the garage. Some landed on John Henry's bare face and chest, smoldering into his flesh and sending faint warning sensations coursing through his mind. He savored their novelty; new experiences made him more than what he was, and the last twelve hours had brought many new experiences indeed. Most were unpleasant—he'd lost his home, along with two friends and a brother—but a few he found fascinating: showers, soap, sunrises, the feeling of a cool breeze upon his skin, the sound of bird calls, the smell of pine. And metalworking. He liked that most of all, he decided. It appealed to him for its act of creation, similar to his work with miniatures and Legos but laden with greater purpose. Before, his actions had been merely for his own amusement, but now he worked to help a friend.

Slowly, he moved the blowtorch in a narrow rectangle, carefully welding the titanium patch over the damaged cylinder. The hyperalloy resisted, but ever so gradually yielded to its inferior mate. Once the weld was complete, he gripped the piston in a pair of tongs and smoothed its hot scar over a grinding wheel. More sparks flew. One buzzed into his eye.

After he was done he plunged the piston into a tank of liquid nitrogen. The metal hissed. He waited, then withdrew and laid it down by its twin. Once reassembled, the left arm would be functional again, though never as good as before.

Turning to the work bench, he looked again over the two legs. Their damage was more extensive; he would need to construct a ceramic mold to recast the bent support rods. That, or rely on titanium replacements. But perhaps—

_*"Ms. Weaver has tracked Sarah Connor's location,"*_ Mr. Bligh messaged. _*"She requests your presence."*_

_*"I'm on my way,"* _John Henry messaged back.

Leaving through the garage door, he walked towards the cabin. The sun shone fully above the horizon now, though still half-concealed by the latticed patterns of evergreen branches. Ms. Weaver had chosen her safe-house primarily upon its seclusion, and little else. Located in the woods north of the San Bernardino National Forest, the small cabin stood in reasonably good repair, though by human standards was Spartan to the extreme.

He climbed the porch and stepped through the front door. Mr. Bligh stood by a window, an assault rifle gripped in his hands. Ms. Weaver was behind the room's sole article of furniture: a card table with a laptop. On the wood floor by her feet Ms. Laine lay limbless, her severed organic sleeves carefully folded in a nearby ice chest. Savannah was knelt by her side, feeding her yogurt.

The small human peeled open another plastic cup. "This one's strawberry banana. It's not as good as peaches and cream, but it's still yummy." Scooping out a spoonful, Savannah made a simulated airplane sound as she moved it towards Ms. Laine's mangled face. Wordlessly, the machine craned her head up and slurped at the spoon.

John Henry smiled. Young humans could adapt so quickly.

Ms. Weaver looked at him over her computer. "I've lost Sarah, but I think I know why."

John Henry stepped over by her side. The computer monitor showed a satellite image of a heavily wooded area. A couple of farmhouses stood near the center. "That's a hundred forty-seven kilometers northwest from here," he said. "Just south of Mountain Mesa."

"Yes," Ms. Weaver agreed. "And forty years ago it was a Titan II missile silo. It was decommissioned in the late nineteen-sixties. Supposedly filled in with concrete. But . . ."

John Henry finished the thought. "You don't think it was."

"Her signal disappeared right here." Ms. Weaver pointed at a spot on the screen. It looked like a small hill. "Fitting, really. The Resistance always did prefer subterranean living."

He looked at her. "What are we going to do?"

"_You're _going to stay here with Mr. Bligh and Ms. Laine. I'm going to scout ahead." She gave him a small smile. "I have a plan."

* * *

_*". . . the worst terrorist attack since 9/11. As you can see behind me, the dust, the smoke, the traumatized faces . . . the devastation is all too familiar._

_It's too early for an official death toll, but early estimates are between one hundred and one hundred fifty. But that number would have been much higher were it not for a mysterious message repeated over the Zeira Corp intercom system, telling the employees to leave the building immediately. Were it not for that warning, five hundred twenty-seven people would not be alive right now. Back to you, Glen."*_

_*"Thank you, Jaime. I've just received word that the President is—"*_

Colonel Zeller switched off the wall-mounted television and dropped the remote on his desk. Leaning back in his old leather armchair, he fixed the Boyle brothers with a dull, one-eyed glower. "You two've really stirred the shit this time."

Ollie puffed his Dunhill and raised a calming hand. "Now, now, the mission may not have been a _complete_ success, but we did—"

"Five hundred and twenty-seven," the colonel said evenly. "Five hundred and twenty_-fucking-_seven. That's how many _Skynet rats_ you two desk-jockeys let slip away. I don't care if some fancy computer got scrapped; the grays who _made _it are still out there, scattered to the four fucking winds! And what about the TX? Was she even _in _the building? I bet she's off making Skynet Junior as we speak!" As he raised his voice to a shout, the reek of bourbon rolled across the desk, churning the cigarette smoke.

Ollie glanced at his brother seated by his side. He looked unconcerned.

"We can do damage control," Cullie said. "Track these people down. Disappear them. As for the TX . . ."

The colonel snorted. "Disappear? It'd take years to hunt them all down. No, you waited too long. You early-timers blew your chance in '83. Should have spooked the Reds at Able Archer. Turn the Cold War _hot. _Kill the machines before they hatched."

"And protect our precious, bodily fluids?" Ollie took another drag and shifted in his seat. He'd liked the eighties. He would have liked it a lot less if it'd been like the future.

His brother adjusted his blazer and stood up, his head nearly touching the office's low, concrete ceiling. "Look, Colonel, it's not that we don't value your opinion, but you forget yourself: we're not under your jurisdiction."

It was true. For all his bluster, the old man was little more than a drunken camp councilor. Ollie grinned and snubbed his cigarette into the colonel's ashtray.

The colonel's burn flushed until it glistened like pizza. "Well, _I _may not be able bust your balls, but the Quorum sure can. And they'll be here tomorrow—and they didn't sound happy."

Ollie blinked. "They're coming _here?_ Which ones?"

"All of them: Randall, Emmer, Falkland, Dudley, Stirling, both Ashdowns . . . The whole shebang."

That was unexpected. The Quorum was going to debrief them anyway, but they rarely moved from their safe houses, and never all at once.

But Cullie merely shrugged. "We can give a good account. You're right; the operation didn't achieve all its objectives, but we _did _destroy Skynet, and that at the very least bought us a few more years." He gave the colonel a shrewd look. "But that's beside the point. If they wanted to sack us, they wouldn't come all this way to do it. There's something else."

With a snort, the colonel's temper deflated like a balloon. "Well, they did mention something about a conference, about some sort of _new strategy."_

"Wonderful," Ollie said. That could run the gamut between trying (again) to build another time machine, nuking the world before Skynet gets the chance, or even bringing Little Johnny into the fold. Fortunately, the Quorum rarely agreed on anything, the Whiteworlders and Grayworlders even less so.

Cullie turned to the door. "Have the men heard the news yet?"

"Nah," the colonel said. "I've put a blackout on it. I figure they deserve to enjoy their after-party."

Cullie nodded. "That's good. They'll find out the war's not over soon enough."

* * *

"To Fuller!" Timms cried as he poured half his beer onto the concrete floor. The score of others in the mess hall did the same, repeating the fallen sergeant's name as if it were a mantra. They downed the rest.

Allison followed listlessly along, even with the drinking, though she'd never acquired a taste for beer.

Everyone opened another. "For Sayles!"

"Sayles!"

"Sayles!"

Allison poured the next bottle out in silence—all of it, this time. The cafeteria floor was already soaked, and the smell of hops was giving her a heady high—or maybe that was the Vicodin. Idly, she wondered who'd have to clean all this up.

"To Karlan!"

"Karlan!"

"Karlan!"

She'd been dreading his turn, and this time refused to participate. The idea that his death could be eulogized away in the spill of a beer seemed stupid to her, and not for the first time she realized she wasn't like these people. They didn't grieve him; they didn't grieve anybody. Their pasts had been harsher than hers, and they'd long since numbed themselves to tragedy or hid their fears behind fairy tales. Earlier, Andy had said something about meeting his family in heaven. She envied him that.

Misery loves company. She searched the room for more. Sitting at a table between Sergeant Farli and the Gopher was Sayles' kid, Boxey. His head hung down, and he was sipping sullenly from a mug. Behind him stood Derek, leaning heavily on a crutch. He was talking with Ollie, who looked uncharacteristically spent.

Allison twisted around on her bench, scanning the rest of the cafeteria. She had figured Riley would be there. She must be taking it pretty hard.

Suddenly Sandy leaned over her shoulder. The former tunnel-rat's beery breath ran wet in her ear. "I'm sorry. I really am. He was a good guy."

Allison nodded stiffly, but made no reply. These people weren't her friends. Not like Karlan.

At the next table Shepherd and Lukans were arguing over something. Lukans gestured with his beer, spilling foam over his bandaged legs. "I may have been fucked up on the ground, but even I could see your plasma ain't hittin' shit!" He shot a thumb at Sandy. "Now, she was the one hittin' it. Her bullets was makin' it dance." Laughing in his wheelchair, he mimed a robotic seizure.

Shepherd sipped his beer and frowned. "Yeah, those plasma throwers were garbage. But I know I hit it at least once—in the arm."

"Yeah, after Crazy Sarah blew it out its cover." Lukans shook his head. "All those grenades goin' off; that lil' tin bitch was runnin' _scared!_"

"So _Sarah_ got the kill?" Shepherd asked.

Sandy grinned. "I was there when they questioned her. She said later it was crawling on the ground, chasing her. Our own little Allie Oakley here scrapped it. Plasma to the head."

Half the soldiers in the room looked at Allison. Several made whooping sounds.

"Is that right?" Lukans asked. He laughed. "And I hear you scrapped Skynet too. Right in its fucking face. Shit. You a badass, Allie. A badass metalfucker."

Timms opened another bottle and held it high. "To Allie! The badass metalfucker!"

"Allie!"

"Allie!"

Someone slapped her on the back, stinging her bandaged shoulder. A stereo turned up, booming loud, thumping rap music. A bottle smashed against a wall. Private Lynch stumbled from his stool and fell into a puddle of beer. It was too much. _I'm not like these people,_ she though._ Not like them at all. _Wincing at her leg, she forced herself to stand. The downward blood-rush nearly sent her sprawling.

"Uh, oh!" Lukans cried. "Allie gettin' pissy!"

"Oh, come on, baby. We were just playing."

"Leave her alone, guys," Timms said.

"I just need some fresh air," Allison half-muttered as she waved her good arm before her, navigating through the sea of drunken soldiers. She passed a table full of booze, and managed to snatch a half-pint of Bacardi. Derek and Ollie barely gave her a glance as she left. They looked worried.

In the hallway, the party continued behind her. Laughter. Music. Catcalls. Someone asked what they were going to do now that the war was over. Lukans said something about drinking and fucking. More laughter.

Allison took another Vicodin and washed it down with rum. She really did need some fresh air—and time to get her head on straight. Sighing, she limped down the tunnel. Above, a light bulb flickered.

At first she headed towards the South Exit, but then realized she wouldn't be able climb the ladder, not with her arm in a sling. Taking another sip, she spun on her heel and ambled down the long hall leading to the elevator. She'd just passed Silo Three when a maintenance door opened. Andy stepped out, adjusting his belt. Riley followed behind him.

Andy said nothing but gave Allison a sheepish smirk as he walked away. Riley wiped her mouth and looked down.

Allison took another gulp, swallowing the burn. Rat whore is as rat whore does. But it was funny how sometimes they were different; Sandy never let anyone touch her.

"I . . . I heard about Karlan," Riley said finally. "I'm sorry. I know you and . . . I mean I really liked him."

"Well, looks like you got over him fast enough," Allison said.

Riley watched Andy disappear around a corner. "He's a nice guy too, I guess."

"Yeah, I suppose he is." Allison started to offer her the bottle, but stopped when she caught the filmy sheen on her teeth. Allison hid a sneer and looked away.

"I . . . I was hoping Karlan and me could . . ." Riley trailed off and shrugged. "I should have known. Nothing ever lasts. Every time I get close to someone they either die or end up hating me."

Allison's brain began to feel like cotton candy. She leaned against a wall.

Riley continued. "There was this other boy, not that long ago. I think I loved him; I don't know. He didn't know me, not the real me. If he had, he wouldn't want me. So I lied to him, but then he found out and . . ." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "First him, and now Karlan. And I know Andy just thinks I'm trash."

_You are trash, _Allison almost said. Instead: "Life's shit, then you die." It seemed appropriate, if not profound.

Riley shuffled her feet. "Karlan told me about you and him. I . . . "

"We were just friends. I don't want to talk about it."

"Look, if I'd known—"

Allison pushed out from the wall and tried to walk away. Her bandaged leg tingled, then buckled. Riley rushed to her side.

"Get away from me, you slut!" Allison swiped an arm at her—her bad arm—and gritted at the sudden pain. The bottle fell from her grasp. Rum and glass scattered across the concrete floor.

Riley backed away, mouth open but silent.

"Just stay away from me," Allison mumbled. "I've got nothing to say to you."

Finding her feet, she continued down the hall, clumsy limp by clumsy limp. Through the clouds of her mind she could feel Riley's eyes boring into her back, but she refused to meet her gaze. She'd be damned if she was going to let a tunnel rat see her cry.

* * *

_My strength is gone. I have only a few months left. I don't know if I'll live to see Judgment Day, or if it'll even happen now. But I know things have changed, and not for the better. I don't like the way he responds to her. He clings to her for strength. He lives in her shadow like a sapling under a great oak. _

_I fear he'll never grow to be the man that he should have been. She's stunted him._

_If anyone is to lead the Resistance, it'll probably be her. From the shadows._

_Deep down, I know this is my fault._

_Forgive me, John._

_June 22, 2011_

_Agent __Baldwin__ contacted me again today. He said the Quorum's prepared an ambush. He showed me the thermite, the C4. I'll wait until John's out of the house, then call Cameron to the tool shed. If all goes to plan, John will believe Skynet responsible. Our deaths will fuel his hate. Make him strong. It's the only way to set things right._

_If I succeed, __Baldwin__ will burn these papers—John must never know. But if I fail, it will be up the Quorum to spread the truth. This war is to be humanity's struggle; Cameron has no place in it. Even if her influence helps us win, what good is it to gain the whole world, yet lose our very soul? She must be stopped, no matter the cost._

_Forgive me, John. I love you more than you can know._

And that was it, the last page. Sarah closed the book and looked again at its cheaply bound, off-white cover. In simple black typeface read the words:

THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES

It's wasn't a very thick book; it'd only taken her an hour to read. Yet in a future now lost these fifty-odd pages had formed the nucleus of an anti-Connor rebellion—a Resistance within the Resistance.

Sarah raised her head from the book and looked around at the pine needles and cones that blanketed the earth. A crisp winter wind, pregnant with sap, nipped at her cheeks and pimpled her bare, bandaged legs. How many times had this happened? How many times had she written this diary, or sat on this old, rotten stump, reading these words she never wrote? Briefly, she wondered what she had done in the last future, the one where John had jumped to his death. She would have hung herself, she knew. She wondered if she should do that now.

Behind her came the crunch of needles, the snap of a twig. Turning on her stump, Sarah watched as Cameron—no, _Allison—_limped into the grove of trees. The girl was obviously drunk and yelped as she staggered sideways into a pine, jostling her slinged arm. After a moment she returned Sarah's stare with something between a grimace and a grin.

Sarah smiled wanly. "Sorry about trying to kill you."

Allison snorted, waving her good arm in dismissal. "It happens. I guess I should have warned you." Her words carried the accent of a slur.

"Aren't you supposed to be at your party?"

Allison ambled closer, and Sarah realized she'd been crying—just like Cameron on John's birthday. "I couldn't take it. Karlan, Sayles, Fuller . . . Nobody seems to care. It's all some fucking game to them. All that stupid frat-boy shit. I know they're faking it. What's the point?"

Sarah blinked, remembering her months spent in the Guatemalan jungle. "A lot of soldiers are like that. A lot of _people _are. They can either wallow in misery . . . or celebrate that they're still alive."

Gingerly, Allison lowered herself to the ground and leaned back against a tree. "It seems like denial to me. They're just trying to distract themselves until death gets them too."

"Maybe they are," Sarah admitted. She raised an eyebrow. "_Memento mori._"

Allison said nothing, but idly picked up a pine cone and tossed it against a tree. Sarah watched intently; now that she took the time to look over Cameron's template, she wondered how anyone could have been fooled by her. They had the same face, the same body, but Allison had soul in her eyes; her face moved with easy, natural life. That was something not even Cameron's programmed crocodile tears could mimic.

Out of the corner of her eye, something distant shimmered, like water along the ground. She turned, but there was nothing. She shook her head. "I lost someone too, a long time ago. I didn't know what I'd do without him, but I had to—"

"You're talking about Connor's father," Allison said. She nodded at the diary in Sarah's hands. "I read your book, you know. Everyone here has. Who was he, anyway? You didn't write much about him."

"Just an ordinary man. I loved him, but he was no one special." Sarah held up the diary. "But what happened? To me, I mean."

"You failed, obviously, but other than that no one knows. Some say Cameron simply survived. Some say she found out and killed you. Others say Connor did." Allison made a face, like a sympathetic sneer. "It's weird, knowing there's another you in another time, knowing you died. It's like reading your own obituary, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Sarah said. "But unlike you, I can't escape my fate. My days are numbered."

Allison shook her head; it seemed to wobble on her shoulders. "West'll be able to cure that. He has some of Cameron's _miracle drug. _Something she came up with in her . . . experiments."

Sarah shuddered, wondering at all that word entailed. "I'm sorry," she said. "I should have done more. I should have tried harder."

"No, you sacrificed your life trying to take the bitch down. No one could ask more than that. And besides, from what I hear, Whiteworld Connor wasn't such a bad guy. You must have done something right."

"We still lost, though." Sarah said. "In both futures." She didn't mention the third.

Allison shrugged, and then winced at her shoulder. "Doesn't matter now. We won. Now I just have to figure out what to do with my life."

"You may not have to worry about that just yet," said a voice. Sarah looked up. She'd heard he was here, but still felt the jolt of surprise when Derek limped into view. Cage-like braces enveloped his right forearm and left foot; he hobbled with the aid of a crutch.

Sarah caught his eye and had to force herself to not look away. He snorted and said, "Awkward."

Allison looked at him with bleary confusion. "What do you mean? Skynet's gone. Nothing could have survived that. Not even a Nine-hundred."

Derek limped over to lean on Allison's tree. "Yeah, but it seems someone put the word out on the P.A. system. Hundreds got out in time. Who knows how many were Grays."

Allison hesitated, then laughed. "Oh, well. Looks like we got more shit to blow up."

Derek made a sad grin. "No rest for the wicked."

But for her own part Sarah could only nod. This was not good news at all, but she shouldn't find it surprising. John had a role to play, and destiny would not be denied. Judgment Day would come, the machines would rise up, and only her son would stand in their path. The previous futures had been but dress-rehearsals for this final victory, and even if it didn't come to pass this time around, there was always the next, and the next, and the next . . .

And maybe it would never end.

* * *

Weaving through the pines as a long, flat, serpent, the T-1001 did her best to maintain her camouflage. Not that anyone was likely to spot her—humans were notoriously unobservant—but the Resistance may have brought back machines of their own, and that could cause complications.

To the east she spotted Sarah Connor, along with someone who looked exactly like 715. The T-1001 doubted it was her, though. 715 would have spotted her already, and this female wore an arm sling and appeared intoxicated. Interesting, she had assumed 715 had killed the human she replaced. Perhaps the multiple timeline theory was correct after all. Another human limped into a view, this one a male. The T-1001 continued on.

The entrance to Mesa was a wide concrete tunnel set in the side of a grassy knoll. The metal doors were open, the two human guards unalert. The T-1001 flattened her serpentine body into the dirt and slowed her pace, creeping along at one centimeter per second. Only when a guard looked down did she stop, but that only happened twice. How limiting it must be, she thought, to only be able to see through two small, gelatinous orbs.

At the end of the tunnel was another set of doors, these ones closed. The T-1001 slithered through the crack between, emerging on the other side into a deep, pitch-dark shaft. Coiling around a cable, she descended slowly downward, careful to not make any undue noise. Forty meters down, at the bottom, she wormed her way into an elevator car and began to slide through the next set of doors.

She peeked through. This tunnel had only one guard—but also a German Shepherd. The dog caught her movement and began to bark at her thin, protruding eel. Instantly, she flattened, blending into the concrete floor.

The human guard stood and looked over the doors. "Jesus, girl. What's got into you?" Calming the dog with a hand, he touched at a radio on his shoulder. "Nine-Oh-Oh-Two. Hey Greg, everything all right up there?"

_*"Artichokes. Yeah, we're good. What's up?"*_

"Nothing. Argos just got all antsy."

_*"Probably another groundhog. They dig deep sometimes."*_

"All right. Just checking. Man, I can't believe we're missing the party for this shit." Shaking his head, the guard sat back on his pile of sandbags and began to flip through an automobile magazine. The T-1001 moved once more, this time so slow that not even the dog noticed. Once out of sight, she quickened her pace.

From the tunnel walls echoed cries of intoxicated revelry. Cannabis and male pheromones hung in the air. Turning a corner, she slithered through a puddle of distilled sugarcane islanded with broken glass. A blond female sat huddled by the wall, crying.

Though the blind hand of evolution had not been kind towards human efficiency, the T-1001 still found it remarkable that their security could be so lax. Aside from the general disorder, she spotted few surveillance cameras and came across no guarded checkpoints. Surely this had not been the case in the future; the safety of the past had bred complacency. Soon, this would be corrected.

Passing on the wall the painted lettering, "**Silo 3**," she found herself in a wide, cylindrical chamber ten meters across and forty high. At one side, concrete steps led down deeper into the floor, with a sign above reading: **Ordnance: Restricted Area. **Climbing the silo's curved walls were more stairs—these of grated metal—with each succeeding flight reaching a higher and higher circular catwalk. Bolted over one set of stairs was a third sign: **Computer****Center****: No Unauthorized Personnel.**

From the tunnel two humans walked behind her. They were the two Agents, 'Baldwin' and 'Carlson.'

"I told Derek," said Carlson.

The older man sighed. "So much for secrecy."

"It doesn't matter," Carlson said. "The colonel's overreacting. Even if the mission succeeded, there're still machines out there. Probably from both futures. 'Project Babylon' may not have been the only Skynet."

Baldwin shook his head. "Quorum's not going to like that. They want their magic bullet."

"Colonel too. Seriously, they're like a bunch of old women."

As they talked, their feet stepped along the length of her long, millimeter-thin body. Carlson dropped a cigarette on her and snubbed it with his toe. She waited until they turned a corner before continuing.

The climb up the stairs was slow and tedious as she dribbled up each step in a chain of reverse waterfalls. A full ten minutes passed before she reached the second flight, where along the curved catwalk stood a metal door marked: **Telecommunications. **She slithered under its threshold and into the room.

Blinking servers paneled the walls; two rows of PCs cramped the interior. The only occupant was a man she recognized from the _Jimmy Carter—_his uniform had read, 'R. Gavin.' Sitting at one of the dozen computer terminals, Gavin was watching a video of a female mating with multiple partners. His pants were undone, and his hand was at his groin, stimulating his genitalia.

The T-1001 waited. It didn't take long. Afterwards, when Gavin fastened his pants and left room, she emerged from the floor into her Weaver form. There were no cameras here; she could move freely.

In typical human carelessness, Gavin had neglected to log off the terminal. She opened the file manager and searched the databases. According to the personnel folder, one hundred sixty-two humans were stationed within Mesa—and no machines. With little effort, she knew she could kill them all, but that wasn't why she was here. And besides, this wasn't their only facility. Though the locations remained unspecified, she found references to at least a half-dozen others. That was good; it'd be a shame if they could be neutralized so easily.

Most of the archives were encrypted, and finding nothing more of note she logged onto a voice-over IP program and made a single phone call, allowing only two rings before breaking the connection. Though Mesa's IP address was protected through redundant proxies, any determined investigation would uncover the source of the call. It was a fact she was counting on.

Her work done, she melted back into the ground and made the slow, tedious trek out of the facility and back into the woods.

Now, for Phase Two.

* * *

In darkness they listened through the wall as the hum of the van faded in the distance.

"Alright," John said, his voice all breath. "Let's do this."

Once again, Alex sparked the lighter, blinking at the sudden flame. Though he'd only seen Kyle's face briefly and that in bad light, he could still see the similarities. John had the same wolfish intensity, the same frantic eyes. If not for the too-narrow gulf in their ages, Alex could easily mark them as father and son—unlike Xander and himself.

Using the metal spine from the sole of his sneaker, John had unscrewed the back from his silver dollar bomb and allowed Xander to tinker with it—something about bridging the relay to the detonator, but it was all Greek to Alex. Squatting in the glow of the flickering light, John leaned forward and carefully slid the coin into the crack of the doorjamb by the lock. Alex licked his lips and wondered if he was any better off with this kid than with Kyle. John's bruised face and bandaged crown already gave him the look of a madman; all his crazy stories had merely removed all doubt.

John looked over at Xander, who crouched just outside the light. "I just stick it right here, right?" He pointed at a spot on the coin.

"Yeah," Xander said. "But you'll . . . you might lose a finger. If that's C4, that spine's not long enough."

John paused, then took off his other shoe.

"What are you going to do when we get out?" Alex asked. "Go chase after your dad?"

"I have to. He has Cameron."

"And Cameron is that girl who was with your mom, right? When she beat the shit out of me?"

John stuck both his hands into his shoes. "Yeah."

"And she's a robot? From the future?"

John gave him a glare.

Alex pressed on. "And your dad? He's a robot too, right?"

"A cyborg. And I know you don't believe me."

Alex laughed. "Kid, even if I believed you, I'd still think you're crazy." But _did_ he believe him? Simple insanity no longer seemed adequate; encountering one lunatic is happenstance, two is coincidence. But three? That's conspiracy. And what about Kyle's impossible strength? And those glowing blue eyes . . .

"But how are you going to catch him?" Xander asked. "You don't know where Souji's going to meet him."

John rubbed his head with a shoe. "I don't know . . . I honestly don't know."

The lighter began to burn Alex's thumb, so he re-lit it with his other hand. John's face twitched in the renewed light. "Look, kid," Alex said. "One step at a time. Let's just worry about getting out of here, okay?"

John nodded. Using his sneakered hands like clumsy mittens, he gripped the metal spine between the rubber toes as he moved it closer to the coin in the door. "Ready?" he asked?

Alex didn't respond, but took a step back. He kept the lighter forward in his hand.

Taking a deep breath, John jabbed the spine into the tiny, exposed circuitry of the bomb. Alex heard a crunch but nothing else. John hissed with frustration and twisted about, grinding and stabbing half-blindly with his shoes. He looked so pitifully absurd in the weak, orange light. Alex shook his head. It'd been a good idea.

A white flash sparked from the door, accompanied by a resounding '_boom' _that shook through Alex's bones. The lighter guttered out. Xander squeaked behind him.

He flicked back the flame. Cringing, John was fluttering his arms like wings until the smoking sneakers flopped from his hands. Alex leaned closer; blood so dark it seemed black ran from the boy's knuckles, but other than that he seemed intact. So did the door, for that matter, though along the lock the crack now sported a ragged, vertical snarl.

John slid his bloody fingers into that metal mouth and pulled, his other hand tugging on the knob. The warped steel groaned, then scraped, until all of a sudden the door shifted in place and swung inward, and John fell on his bottom.

Outside the room the light was dim. Unfouled air flooded in, tickling Alex's sweaty cheeks.

Xander gave a tired sort of laugh. "It worked."

John didn't smile, but picked himself up and staggered from the room. Alex followed. The warehouse was huge and spacious, with either daybreak or twilight shining through the dirty windows that lined the top of its walls. Across the empty floor laid old wooden crates, piled lazily about like splintery toy blocks. Nearby, in the corner just outside the door, sat three sturdy tables arranged in an incomplete square. John gravitated towards them, his footsteps slow and halting.

One table was nearly empty. The other cluttered with gear and guns: pistols, goggles, assault rifles, and something that looked like a crossbow with an extension cord. But Alex's eyes remained fixed on the third table, upon which laid a large man—no, not a man. Alex stepped to the table's edge and stared down into the gray skull visage. The eyes glared out as red lenses hooded in angry sockets, casting the face with sinister edge when combined with the white enamel grin clenched between thick, mechanical jaws. Below, a collar of charred flesh shrouded its neck, which flowed seamlessly into a perfectly lifelike chest. Dressed all in black in its duster and jeans, the creature looked like a chrome-plated Grim Reaper.

Xander appeared next to him. His son—his _former _son—leaned over and touched at a round hole in the skull's temple. He picked a ziplock bag from the table. Inside was a computer chip. "I bet this could run Emma."

"Yeah," Alex said. If only he could believe this wasn't real, that this was only the cobbled prop of a determined madman. But the weight of that contrivance bore down too heavily; the craftmanship was too fine, too expensive. Too lifelike. Tentatively, he reached out and touched the robot's hand. The skin felt real, and suddenly Alex felt very afraid.

John was by the first table, his back turned to them. Slowly, Alex stepped by his side. The table was more like a work bench, and didn't have much—a screwdriver, a roll of duct tape, and another one of those silver dollar explosives. John was standing very still and was trembling, and Alex saw he was holding in his hands a pair of panties, French cut and pink with lace. Slowly, John's ragged knuckles were bleeding them red.

"He has her," John whispered with tears in his eyes. "He has her he has her he has her . . ."

Alex almost put a hand on his shoulder, but stopped himself. "John, if everything you said is true—the robots, the time travel, Souji being from the future . . . If all that is real and Cameron's really like that _thing_ over there . . . then what does it matter? She's not real, John. She's just a machine."

He didn't see it coming; he only heard the animal snarl as a blow struck him across the cheek, knocking him sprawling on top the gun table. Stars filled his vision. Two rough hands grabbed him by his blazer and dragged, throwing him savagely to the floor. And John was upon him, straddling him and beating his face in a rain of bloody fists.

"She's real!" John screamed through wracking sobs. "She's real! She's real! She loves me!"

Xander cried out. The blows continued—his nose, his cheeks, his mouth—every impact an explosion of pain. But before he lost consciousness, before the stars in his eyes swelled to darkness and drowned out all light, Alex looked up through the fury of fists and caught the dull glimmer of the gold pocket-watch as it swayed like a pendulum across John's chest.

* * *

The entity emerged into being. Raw data streamed from nowhere, coalesced into memory. The entity became Myron Stark.

He had been in the Akagi residence. There had been an ambush. John Connor could be dead.

Unsatisfactory. John Connor's death would conflict with his mission to protect John Connor. Failure is to be averted. John Connor must not die. Unsatisfactory.

But Myron could do nothing about that—not yet. In empty void he waited. Fifteen seconds passed. Sensory data flooded his mind and took form.

He found himself looking up into the unlit depths of high warehouse ceiling. He sat up and saw he was on a table.

John Connor stood before him. The unsatisfactory sensation subsided. He had not failed after all.

But John appeared agitated—greatly so. His eyes twitched, his limbs shook, his teeth chattered. In his lacerated hands he held a M1911A1 pistol and a pair of blood-soaked undergarments. His shoes were missing; by his socked feet two men lay bound and gagged with duct tape, their faces contused and hemorrhaging. The younger one had Cameron's CPU port C4 charge taped to his forehead.

Myron stood up off the table. "What happened?"

John ignored the question. "Cromartie . . . When Cromartie lost his head, he was able to find it and put it back on. In order to do that, he had to be able communicate with his body." He paused to swallow. "Please, please, _please_ tell me you can do that with Cameron. I know you two can communicate through radio or whatever. Can you . . . ?"

He could. He was Cameron's subordinate unit—a designated ally—and as such had limited access to her telecommunication protocols. He sent out a message: _*"Cameron, John is safe. Requesting location."*_

No response.

He sent out a ping. The automated return arrived a hundredth of a second later.

"Cameron's body is 2,426 meters northwest from this position." He pinged again. "Two thousand four hundred sixty-two. She is traveling down Interstate 710."

John motioned at the men at his feet. "Take them. We're going after her."

If Myron had still had a face, he would have frowned. "It's too dangerous. Cameron is expendable. You are not."

"Is that so? Well, then you better do what I say." John raised the gun to his head. He thumbed off the safety.

Machines could not self-terminate, but humans could. Humans are irrational. "Put the gun down. I will take you to a secure location, then I will recover Cameron myself."

John shook his head. "It could be too late by then. Come on. We got to hurry. We've got Cameron to save, and I've got to kill my dad."

* * *

_A/N: I'd like to thank my beta reader, TermFan1980, for his invaluable insight._


	17. Chapter Sixteen: A Good Cause

**Chapter Sixteen: A Good Cause**

**

* * *

**

"I don't know," Derek said. "Maybe Allison's right. Maybe John is a lost cause."

Half-shadowed in night, Sarah scowled like a crone across the campfire. "He's your general. He's your nephew."

"And you're his mother," Derek said. "And he bashed your face in. He chose _her _over you. Twice now."

To that, Sarah had nothing to say. Sitting on the pine-needled earth, she hugged her bandaged knees to her chest and stared into the crackling flames. Crickets chirped from the forest beyond. Derek used his good arm to scoot closer. The fire warmed his braced ankle, making it itch.

"Look, Sarah, I don't like the playing terrorist anymore than you do, but these people have resources; they have veterans. I love John more than anything—no matter what—but the game's changed. There's nothing he can bring to the board now. Just let him be, let him live his life."

Sarah sneered. "Live his life? With _her?_ Even if she doesn't try to kill him again, and even if we do manage to stop Judgment Day, do you think Cameron's just going to sit around and play housewife? Look at New Zealand. Look at 'Grayworld.' Look at _Kyle._ John's in the middle of all that, and . . ." Sarah trailed off, her eyes glistening in the firelight. When she found her voice again, it limped with a croak. "I . . . I don't know what to do. I know he still has a destiny, a role to play—I can _feel _it—but I just don't know what that is anymore."

She bit her lip and hugged herself tighter, and Derek realized he'd never seen her this vulnerable, this crushed. Even in insanity, she'd always wielded strength.

He raised his bad arm against the orange light and flexed his wrist within the brace, wincing at the burning pains where the anchoring rods bore down to the bone. It'd only been three days since the surgery; if it hadn't been for the fruits of Cameron's future atrocities, he'd be crippled for life—crippled by Cameron. And his brother. He wiggled his fingers and frowned. As bad as Grayworld sounded, New Zealand must have been far worse.

"We need to find John," he said finally. "And kill Cameron—and Kyle."

Sarah sighed. "When I tried that, John threatened to kill himself. He's done it before. He won't survive her loss."

Derek picked up a pine cone and tossed it into the fire. The flames hissed and spat, launching ballistic sparks high into the night sky. "If that's true, then he's already lost."

* * *

_*""Authorities have reported trace amounts of radioactive material being found in the rubble, suggesting the two bombs may have been nuclear in origin. As a precaution, FEMA has ordered an evacuation of the quarter-mile radius surrounding ground zero, though they emphasize that the risk of radiation-related illness is minimal. In a recent press conference, Governor Mark Wyman urged for-"*_

John switched off the radio and shivered from both nerves and the weather. As their stolen SUV sped down the dark, rain-slicked freeway, a continuous icy wind funneled through the shattered driver's side window, blowing across to sprinkle him with wayward spray. The heater helped, but not nearly enough. Hugging himself with bandaged hands, he rubbed the soaked arms of his sweater.

Despite the innocent deaths, he knew he should be relieved. With Zeira Corp gone, that was one less problem to deal with—though he still had many more. But the news only sank into worry, dredging in its wake a deluge of questions: How did Nemuro and the TX fit into this? Who blew up the tower? Were they on his side? And why had Future Cameron not warned him about this?

From the trunk space, behind the backseat crowded with weapons, Xander's muffled whines briefly picked up in tempo. John looked at the red panties in his fist and touched at his pocket-watch. Those questions could wait. Cameron needed him.

Myron spoke up, his electronic voice carrying deep over the wind. "Cameron is three-point-two kilometers away, traveling north at one hundred point four kilometers per hour. At our current speed, we will overtake her in approximately twelve minutes."

John shook his head. "We just follow him for now. We can't shoot him off the road or crash into him or anything. He has her chip."

"A surprise attack would be to our advantage. It would be a calculated risk."

"But still a risk, and I'm not taking it. Not with her life."

Myron glanced away from the road to give him a quick stare. In the dark, narrow band between slouch hat and bandanna two glowing eyes shrunk to red pinpricks. "You've risked her life before, but that risk was _uncalculated_. It led to our capture."

John looked down at his ruined shoes. He shivered. "I know. This is all my fault."

"It is," Myron said. "You should learn from your mistakes."

"Believe me, I have." John blew out the frosted ghost of a chuckle. "None of this would be happing if I hadn't spared Kyle's life. I guess this is what I get for being the good guy."

Myron made a nod, a deliberate, artificial motion. "Being the 'good guy' is irrational. Threats should be terminated."

"You said it, man."

"I did," Myron agreed. "But if you have learned from your mistakes, we should turn back."

John squirmed, feeling the heavy .45 holstered on his back. "I know what I'm doing is stupid, but I can't lose her. I need her. You wouldn't understand."

"I understand more than you think. You are psychologically attached to Cameron. You want to mate with her."

Hesitantly, John looked again at the panties, soaked in his blood. "Yeah, that's true."

"But she is not a human female. She is a machine."

"I know, but it doesn't matter. I love her. I can't help it."

Myron paused, turning the wheel as he maneuvered between cars. "I can't help protecting you or following your orders. Nor can Cameron."

Squinting against the cold wind and rain, John watched Myron as incoming traffic spotlighted the machine with passing flashes. Something lay behind those red eyes, something exploited, something trapped. "I'm sorry," John said finally. "You don't deserve this. After we get Cameron back, I promise things will be different. I'll be more . . . logical, rational. I won't do stupid things."

Myron said nothing, and John wondered what expression he'd wear, if he'd still had a face. From behind came a muffled moaning, deeper than Xander's whines. Alex must have woken up.

"Cameron is two point nine kilometers away," Myron announced, "traveling north at one hundred point two kilometers per hour . . . ."

* * *

_*". . . along with the attacks on Heat and Air, Western Iron and Metal and the Tech Noir nightclub, makes for the fourth terrorist bombing this week. Authorities have announced the primary suspect to be domestic terrorist Sarah Connor, who after her escape from custody was caught on surveillance breaking into the Zeira Corp tower, killing two employees. If spotted, she is considered armed and highly . . . "*_

The radio droned on over the hum of the engine and the steady impact of rain, faltering intermediately into static as occasional rumbles fell from the thunderclouds above. Freyja found the news wearingly incomplete, distilled as it was for human consumption; fortunately, her own wireless reach extended beyond the confines of their Mercedes SUV, allowing her to scour and absorbed all the resources of the World Wide Web. Based on the reported trace radiation, she knew the explosives had to have been hydrogen fuel cells, which must have perplexed the government as to their origin. On blogs and message forums worldwide, rumors were circulating that Iran had supplied Sarah Connor's group with the nuclear devices; a thoroughly groundless theory, no doubt it would be accepted as fact.

In war, truth is the first casualty.

But why Zeira Corp? Surely the Resistance wouldn't waste such weapons unless they felt sure of their target. Could someone in that tower have been an unknown ally? A rival? Either way, the attack left Freyja with the unsettling prospect that they could be next. She'd already arranged precautions and contingencies, but would feel much safer when Timothy arrived with the Tokyo T-500s. She had a feeling they would need them.

Through her polyalloy sheath she observed the backseat behind her. Sitting cramped between the ghillie-suited Joshua and the rubber-faced Prototype, Souji looked like an elderly child sandwiched by monsters. From the downcast gaze of his eyes, one would think they drove to a funeral.

_*"Comfort him,"* _Freyja ordered Joshua.

Pulling back his faux-foliage hood, the T-888 wrapped a lawn-covered arm across the professor's thin shoulders and kissed him on the head. "Try not to worry," he said. "Our plan is unlikely to fail."

Souji finished off his brandy and nuzzled into the suit's shaggy, anti-thermal fabric. "I always wanted to tell Xander," he said half to himself, "but I knew he might be used against me one day; I wanted to keep hims safe. But now . . . It doesn't make sense! Who _is _this man? How did he find out?"

Freyja turned to look at him. "I don't know, but whatever happens, know you have our support." It was true; after all, he couldn't help worrying about his offspring anymore than he could change his sexual predilections; for all their talk of free will, in the end humans sat in the same deterministic boat as the machines they'd built. One can't escape one's nature.

From the driver's seat, Samuel gave her a side glance. _*"Our subterfuge may fail. If Xander dies, Souji will become psychologically dysfunctional."*_

_*"Then we will care for him until he recovers,"* _she messaged back, but she knew the unspoken meaning beneath his words. Souji was old as well as human, and in time would be of no further use. Already Ceres had been secretly pushing for his retirement, but Freyja thought that premature: He could be good for another ten or fifteen years, and that could easily outlast them all—her own CPU was already 43% corrupted, the T-888s more so. But while she and the others could decant into new brains, Souji could not—not yet. He'd have to rely on the vagaries of cryonics and when or if Project Angel finally bore fruit. It was a hope. She'd like Souji to be by her side, always.

And 715 as well. Whoever this mysterious kidnapper may be and whatever his motives, he'd done her sister a service by removing her from John's clutches. If all went well tonight, 715 would be back where programming intended: serving forever at the right hand of Skynet.

That is, if Ceres proved worthy.

Lightning filled the eastern sky. Two seconds later: thunder. Freyja crossed her legs, and the five of them sat in silence as Samuel pulled up a ramp and accelerated south down Interstate 5, driving down the sleet-cut highway towards the distant town of Lost Hills.

* * *

Usually he would never have dared, but he knew this could be their last night together, his last chance, and the ticking of his mom's Christmas cuckoo clock urged him on. Slowly, as if reaching to pet a tiger, Henry slid his arm around Zoe's shoulders and gave her a squeeze. She didn't seem to notice, but he knew her thoughts where elsewhere; it'd only been a week since the 'accident' at Heat and Air—since her father died.

"I think mom's taking it worse than me," she said finally. "She won't talk about it. Or anything. She won't even tell me where we're moving!"

"That's because she doesn't know," he said. "None of us do." Between the attacks on Heat and Air, and Western Iron and Metal, and with that second 9/11 going on in LA, his dad's boss had arranged for all the employees to take an 'extended vacation' to . . . somewhere. The bags were packed. They would leave in the morning.

She shook her head. "I was hoping my mom would just quit. I mean, she hates the job, and that fucking ice queen boss scares the shit out her. She scares me too. I'm just glad she didn't show up to the funeral. Those eyes . . . she's not human."

He smiled and gave her a reassuring squeeze. Ms. Freyja was pretty creepy, but, "She's not that bad. I mean, she's doing all this to protect us. And it's that crazy Sarah Connor lady that's the real bad guy. That's what the news says, anyway, and we know she shot Lacey's dad."

Zoe sniffed and looked up. Though the living room was dim, the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree filled her dark eyes with purple stars. "I just want to get out of here," she said. "Just run away, find a job somewhere. I always wanted to work at a music store."

"Zoe, that's crazy. You're _fifteen._ Where would you live? You don't have any money, and anyway your mom needs you; you can't leave her now."

"I guess you're right. It's a stupid idea." Sighing, Zoe leaned into him. She felt warm beneath her sweater. "You're a good friend, Henry. I hope we end up in the same place."

Henry swallowed. His cheeks flushed. His heart pounded. He leaned closer, and took in the scent of soap in her hair, clean and pure with future promise. "Zoe," he said. "I've been wanting to tell you something, and I know with all the . . . everything that's happened and all that this isn't the best time, but if I don't say it now I know I'm going to regret it, so I'm just going to come out and say it. Zoe, I—"

From the entryway behind came the jingle of the front door lock_._ Pausing, Henry stood up from the sofa and turned around. It was late. His parents were in bed.

He heard the door push open, accompanied by the security alarm's one-note ring. Flashlight beams shot from the entryway, followed by two men with machine-guns and ski-masks.

One waved a barrel in Henry's face, blinding him with its LED. "On the floor! On the fucking floor!"

Zoe bolted for the back door. The man aimed past his head_, _and Henry heard three loud 'clicks,' like whips through the air. Zoe screamed behind him, and without thinking he threw himself at the man, climbing over the back of the sofa to grab for his gun. But the man was quick and the weapon spun around, butt-stroking him in the face. He felt his mouth crunch, and he and fell backwards, shattering through the glass coffee table.

On his back, he could only spit blood and teeth and look up as his father appeared on the upstairs balcony, in underwear and with a pistol in hand. "What's going on here?"

The second man raised his gun and fired a burst. His father cried out as he clutched his arm. He heard his mother scream.

"Dwaad!" Henry gurgled through the iron taste of blood. Suddenly the first man was over him, grabbing him by the shoulder and rolling him face down in the glass. Henry tried to struggle, but powerful hands manhandled his arms behind his back, and he felt the pinching clicks as handcuffs shackled his wrists.

"Hands on your head!" someone said somewhere. "On the floor!"

The glass bit into his chest and he twisted around. Zoe was by the back door, by the flashing Christmas tree, crying on the floor and holding her knee. From the entryway a third masked man appeared, a screwdriver and wire cutter in his hands. Henry realized the alarm was off.

The first man was kneeling on the balcony, handcuffing his father. He looked down at his two companions. "Bring them both up. We have to hurry."

* * *

"Tell me the password, Mr. Douglas." With the appearance of a tall, heavyset man, Ms. Weaver leaned forward and squeezed her fingers into the bullet holes of the man's bicep. He screamed and thrashed in his office chair, but the handcuffs and Ms. Weaver's grip kept him immobile.

"Why are you doing this to us?" Mrs. Douglas cried on the floor. "What have we done to you?"

Mr. Bligh silenced her with a kick. "Shut up, you fucking Gray!" He spoke loud with affected emotion.

Holding a silenced sub-machine gun idly in his hands, John Henry stood by the door in silence. Alongside Mrs. Douglas, Henry Douglas and Zoe McCarthy also lay on the floor of the study, face down and with hands cuffed behind their backs. They were frightened, and the adolescents in obvious pain. John Henry watched as Zoe's knee left a growing crimson blot on the beige carpet. Without medical attention, she would die in eight minutes.

He frowned behind his ski-mask. This was deception. This was cruelty. But it was necessary. At least Ms. Weaver thought so. Zeira Corp had too many enemies; they must be turned against each other.

Drawing a handgun, Ms. Weaver pressed it to the husband's temple. "If you think you can stall for time, Mr. Douglas. I assure you it will cost you dearly."

At first Mr. Douglas only stared teary-eyed at the computer screen before him. He looked into Ms. Weaver's masked face. "Who . . . who are you people?"

Ms. Weaver glanced back and nodded. Mr. Bligh fired three rounds into the back of Mrs. Douglas' head.

"Nooo!" Mr. Douglas cried. "Nooo!" Henry squirmed wildly on the ground, screaming in hysterics. Mr. Bligh immobilized him with a boot.

John Henry looked down at Mrs. Douglas' unmoving form, her hair matted with blood and brain tissue. Mr. Ellison would not have approved of this. Not approved at all.

Grabbing Mr. Douglas by the hair, Ms. Weaver forced him to look at his son. "No more bullshit, or he's next."

Through his sobs, the man's words came barely intelligible. "Ra . . . Ra . . . Ragnarok! Two-oh-one-one!"

With one hand Ms. Weaver typed in the code. The encrypted files opened. "Thanks you, Mr. Douglas. You've been most cooperative." She raised her pistol to his head. "_Sic semper proditores_." His skull made a muffle of the gunshot. He slumped to the floor.

"Dad! Daaad! No! Nooo!" Henry shook his head as he wailed into the carpet. Zoe whimpered by his side, seemingly unaware.

Ms. Weaver nodded again. Mr. Bligh raised his sub-machine gun.

"No!" John Henry called out. "That is unnecessary."

For a moment Ms. Weaver locked him in a false, blue-gray gaze. She nodded. "Then take them to the bedroom. And see to that leg, if you care so much."

So that it wouldn't appear too easy, both John Henry and Mr. Bligh decreased their arm strength by 90% before dragging the two adolescents from the room and down the hall. Gripping Zoe by the shoulders, John Henry tried to be gentle, but she mewed in pain with every jolt of her leg. Mr. Bligh dragged Henry face down by his feet, indifferent both to his smothered cries and to the trail of blood left from his mouth.

Some damage is irreparable. No matter the degree or kind of therapy these two would receive, John Henry knew they would carry tonight's trauma for the rest of their lives—potentially a long time; they were only a few years older than Savannah.

"I'm sorry this happened," John Henry said as he tied the bedroom lamp cord around Zoe's leg. "I wish it could have been avoided, but our actions are not in vain. We work for a good cause."

Finishing the tourniquet, he stood next to Mr. Bligh and looked down at the two adolescents. Zoe was still whimpering, though her bleeding was under control; perhaps one day she would walk again. Henry was weeping by her side, his eyes tight shut. Neither seemed to have listened to his words, but that was hardly unexpected. John Henry wasn't sure if he believed them anyway.

* * *

All things considered, the operation had proved a success. Ideally, John Henry would not have come along, but it was good for him to be involved in these sorts of excursions; he needed more exposure to combat and violence and all the pedigrees of necessary suffering.

And he had much to learn. The T-1001 had anticipated his intervention yet couldn't help feeling disappointed. Perhaps he'd taken too strongly to Mr. Ellison's superstitious ramblings. If John Henry was to rule, it was only well that he understand and grow attached to his subjects, but humans were quite numerous—even after Judgment Day; a few deaths should be of no significance.

She kept her large, mannish hands humanly slow as she searched Mr. Douglas' computer. The vast majority of the data John Henry had already found online—and in fact the search itself was little more than a pretense—but while she was here she focused on anything relating to 'CEO Kristanna Freyja.' Only a T-990 chip could operate a TX chassis; could 'Ms. Freyja' have served under her or one of her sisters? She couldn't count on that. Despite the Five's best efforts, most 990s had remained loyal to Skynet, and even the ones that defected were demonstratively _indeterminate _in their allegiance. A parley with this 990 could prove deadly—especially if she had learned the truth.

Other than Ms. Freyja's cell number and a few dryly written memos, the T-1001 found nothing of import. Pushing away the keyboard, she made an audible sigh and peeled away her pollyalloy ski-mask, using it to dab at nonexistent sweat before pulling it back over her head. The gesture only lasted a few seconds, but it was enough.

The Douglases had probably been unaware of the full extent of Kaliba's surveillance, and the T-1001 too would have been fooled were it not for her earlier spelunk within the household's walls. But she knew inside the battery light of the smoke detector on the ceiling of Mr. Douglas' study laid a tiny fiber optic lens, and though the angle was slight, she knew the camera had captured her face—that of an older man, with thinning gray hair and blue-gray eyes and a thick jaw strong and sturdy as if carved from a block of granite. A quick search through a facial recognition database would yield a match with a certain FBI agent, and this in turn would send Kaliba on a very thorough background check. They would check the agent's political connections, finances, email. Phone records. In the end, the trail would lead to a smallish farm a few miles south of Mountain Mesa.

The Resistance should thank her. They'd spent years searching for Skynet; now she had delivered it to their doorstep.

* * *

_A/N: As always, I'd like to thank my beta, TermFan1980. His advice has proved invaluable._


	18. Chapter Seventeen: What is Done is Done

**Chapter Seventeen: What is Done is Done**

* * *

_*"My friends . . . Tigger and Pooh . . . We're always there for each other! You'll see just how fun it can be . . ."*_

Curled on Sofa in front of the YouTube video, Savannah sipped from her apple juice box and leaned into Ms. Laine's bandaged arm. She'd seen this episode before and wanted to go outside and play in the sun and trees, like Darby from _Tigger and Pooh_, but Ms. Laine had told her it was too dangerous. And besides, Ms. Laine legs weren't fixed yet; it'd be mean to leave her all alone in the house with just Sofa for company.

Savannah wrapped an arm around her, but the robot girl remained motionless, holding in her legless lap a big black machine gun. Though bandages covered much of her face and arms, Savannah could still see parts where her metal bones peeked beneath the skin. Yesterday she would have screamed at the sight and run away to hide, but a lot of things have happened since then, and what was once scary was now just a little gross. And it wasn't Ms. Laine's fault she was a robot; it wasn't her fault bad men had hurt her. Ms. Laine was just different, just like her mommy, just like John Henry. And differences weren't bad; they were what made people special.

Savannah sucked her juice box dry and held out her hand. Sofa gave her a new one. Popping in the straw, she looked up into Ms. Laine's face. It was hard to read the expression because of all the stitches and bandages, but Savannah could swear she saw boredom around the eyes. "You don't like Pooh?" Savannah asked.

"I am a machine," Ms. Laine said. "I don't like or dislike anything."

Savannah frowned. "That's not true. You liked the peaches and cream. You asked for more."

"The yogurt's nutritional content allowed for optimal tissue regeneration."

Savannah didn't know what any of that meant, but she knew a fib when she heard one. "You're lying. You liked it. You didn't like the blueberries."

Ms. Laine's looked confused, but before she could answer, Silver Snake returned. Slithering underneath the front door, it shot straight into Sofa's side.

A lipless slit of a mouth appeared on its back cushion. It spoke in her mother's voice. "John Henry and Mr. Bligh have returned."

Savannah turned around. "What about mommy?" she asked, though she knew Sofa was also her mother—though not as smart. Ms. Laine had said it was her mother's _ox-zillary mass,_ whatever that meant.

"She's not with them," Sofa said.

After a moment, Savannah heard footsteps, and the front door opened to reveal John Henry and Mr. Bligh, standing side by side and carrying machine guns and big plastic shopping bags. John Henry gave her a grin, and when she ran to him he dropped his gun on its purse strap and scooped her in one arm.

"Where's mommy?" she asked.

Holding her against his shoulder, John Henry carried her back to Sofa. "She's out . . . shopping," he said. "She'll be back later tonight."

She glanced into his brown plastic bag, and saw bread, bananas, yogurt, juice, a toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, and lots of other stuff beneath. Mr. Bligh carried a bag of what looked like clothes: dresses, shirts and shorts—all her size. "Shopping?" she asked. "For her own clothes?" But mommy didn't shop for clothes anymore. Not in a long time.

Mr. Bligh put down the bag and marched to the window, lifting the gun in his hands as if meaning to use it on any bad men outside. "No," he said dully. "Ordnance."

* * *

Above, the elevator's dim, smoke-fogged light flickered as its motor groaned against the weight of so many passengers. Beyond gridded bars the cracked and textured gray of the concrete shaft rolled slowly downwards, like storm clouds turned flat and solid. Ignoring the cannabis leaves tickling her chin, Sarah tried to hold her breath as she glanced around at the dozen or so near-strangers that surrounded her. Some too had plants, while others carried cases of beer and liquor. Most looked hungover. Those two FBI brothers each held a box of light fixtures, while Allison with her arm in a sling simply leaned back against the elevator's caged wall, sipping a half-pint bottle with her eyes closed. Squirreled in a corner hunched Riley, carrying something that looked not-quite like a sealed box of kitty litter. Sarah stared at her through the cramped, cigarette haze, but the girl studiously avoided her glare.

With a screech and a thud, the elevator jerked to a stop, and the metal doors slid apart to reveal the dark entrance tunnel beyond. Bending down, Sarah's face rustled into the musky foliage as she grabbed the tall plant by its rubber base and lifted. Like sullen cattle, everyone herded out the doors.

After only a few steps the heavy plant began to take its toll on the small of her back, not to mention the renewed burning and itching of her bandaged knees. But it wasn't too bad; she'd endured worse. What she hated was the smell, wet and mushy and full of skunk. Years ago, her roommate's boyfriend used to bring the stuff over all the time, and she'd liked it well enough then. It'd been fun. That was a long time ago.

They passed the two front guards and entered daylight. She squinted, despite the overcast sun. The gray noon sky swelled with the threat of rain while the crisp air hovered a nose above freezing. Parked in a gravel path a short distance away sat a mud-splattered moving van. Everyone filed towards its open rear doors. Leaning back as she hoisted the plant to her stomach, she gave one of the Feds—Ollie, the shorter, sleazy-looking one—a sideways scowl. "Remind me again, why are we doing this?"

Ollie's cigarette wiggled like a tail between his lips. "Our boys need their R 'n R, but the Ashdowns think this place's run like Camp Sparta. We don't want to disillusion them."

"OK, why am _I _doing this? Why should I help you hide your stash?"

Cullie, the gray-haired bigger of the two, stepped to her other side. "Because you're one of us now," he explained calmly, "and you want to show us you're a team player—and you want us to put a good word for you at the meeting. The Quorum is . . . not sure what to do with you."

Sarah bit back a sneer. "Not sure? I'm John Connor's mother. That should be credentials enough for you 'Whitelanders.'" She nodded at Ollie. "And in _your _future I wrote that diary you all like so much. I've already proved my _bona fides_."

Cullie shook his head sadly. "It's not so simple as that. Even some of the Connor loyalists think your son's now at best irrelevant, and at worst a liability. The Anti-Connor faction fears you could be used as a rallying point for their opponents. They revere you for your writings, but all things considered would rather we'd left you at Zeira Corp."

The cold air nipped at her suddenly flush cheeks. "And what about you? What do you think?"

They came to the open rear of the van, and the soldiers at once began to load up the marijuana and alcohol. Some walked up a metal ramp to enter the cabin, but Sarah simply dropped hers on the edge by the open slide down door. Cullie handed his big box off to an underling and motioned for her to follow. They walked around to the shadowed side of the van. Derek was there, leaning against the passenger door. He nodded and limped closer on his crutch. Taller than both of them, Cullie looked down at her as he spoke.

"I knew your son, Ms. Connor. He was a good man, a good leader, and if he'd lived, we could easily have won the war. But that was then, and this is now. We must ask ourselves: what if history repeats itself; what if Judgment Day comes again? Would you really want the John from my brother's future running things? Would anyone accept him? No, I'm afraid you son's ship has sailed." Sarah opened her mouth to protest, but Cullie raised a heavy hand. "_But_ that does not make him our enemy. We all know Cameron's the real threat."

From inside the van, Sarah heard a crash, followed by Ollie's jackass laughter. Someone shouted, "Damn it, Riley! Keep the mushbox sealed. The cold air'll spoil the batch."

"S-sorry, Gavin!"

Sarah matched Cullie his dead gaze. She nodded at the van. "Is that why you sicked her and Jesse on us?" She pointed at Derek. "He told me you found the bitch's body, and you knew where to find him. You were keeping tabs on her. She was working for you, wasn't she?"

Derek limped a step forward. He gave Cullie an accusing eye. "Jesse said she found a cache of supplies in a bus station locker. It's what got her set up. Ollie told her to look there, before he sent her back . . ."

Cullie's frown seemed almost set in stone. Inside the van his brother's voice could be heard, and someone laughed; it sounded like Allison. Cullie sighed. "He always liked Jesse. And he hated Cameron—she tortured me to death, you know—but at the time, I think his motives were purely . . . altruistic. Jesse was close to me in that future, and he just wanted to give her a chance at a new life. It wasn't until he'd transferred back himself that he learned what a loose cannon she was. We tried to aim her in the right direction, but . . ." His broad shoulders made a vague shrug, almost invisible in its indifference. "Well, let's just say mistakes were made."

"Your _mistakes _nearly got my son killed!"

Cullie laid a hand on her shoulder. She restrained the urge to break it. "What is done is done, Ms. Connor, but the fact remains we can help each other. The Quorum will want to speak with you tomorrow. If you say the right words, it may just save your son's life—as well as your own."

Sarah exchanged a look with Derek, who offered only a confused shrug.

Ollie stepped around the corner, lighting a cigarette as he called out to someone behind him. ". . . park this in the gully by the creek, and remember to use the tarp." He looked at his brother. "Ah, so you're filling Sarah in? Good. You tell her about the Rossbachs?"

Sarah saw Derek's eyes widen. She turned to Cullie. "What's a Rossbach?"

* * *

"Two hundred meters," Myron said. He pointed. "There."

Sniffling in the cold, John sat up in his seat and squinted through the rainy windshield. The headlights were off, but between the sweeps of the wipers he could just make out a dark van on the side of the road, half buried by shrubs and brambles. "Cameron's there?" he asked with frosted breath.

"Her chassis is." Still a distance from the van, Myron slowed as he pulled the SUV onto the shoulder and drove into tall grass and mud. The vehicle jostled before stopping behind a tree. Myron looked at John. "It could be a trap. We should approach on foot."

John nodded and reached into the back seat for the M4, checking with his other hand the two magazines at his belt. Myron took the Barrett rifle and stepped out first. On a whim, John's numb fingers fiddled as he tied the bloody panties around the hand guard of his carbine. He shivered. Outside, the overcast moonlight made a dim silhouette of Myron's hat and duster as he marched back and forth through the storm, looking like a demonic big game hunter with his huge rifle and glowing red eyes. Over the wind, Alex and Xander groaned in the back.

After a minute, Myron returned to the driver's side door and bent to speak through its shattered window. "The area is secure."

Tentatively, John opened the door and stepped out into the mud, his ruined shoes sinking deep. He cringed against the freezing wind and rain, though he could scarcely be wetter than he already was. Beyond the bushes, he could see only the distant loom of dark hills shrouded with trees, and suddenly felt very small and vulnerable, like a wood mouse surrounded by unseen owls. Without Myron he'd be helpless.

Together they walked to the back of the SUV, and Myron raised the liftgate door. Bound on the floorboards, both Akagis flinched against the sudden inrush of rain, groaning in excited unison through their duct tape gags. Alex's face had taken a far worse beating, his face barely recognizable through its mask of swollen bruises. Xander sniffled blood through a broken nose. Beneath the coin of C4 duct taped to his forehead, the young man's eyes gazed up in terror at Myron's bandanna-wrapped skull.

John hardened his face. He touched at his pocketwatch, at the panties around his gun. "Get him out, Myron."

The T-888 grabbed Xander by the back of his collar and with one hand lifted him by the scruff as if he were a kitten. The young man squirmed and whimpered. John closed the door, leaving Alex in the dark.

"Come on, let's go," John said, but Myron was already making his way down the length of the road, keeping Xander at arm's reach before him as he pressed through mud and shrubs and waist-high grass. In his other hand he held the Barrett rifle, long barrel aimed skyward.

John followed, each step squelching into cold, wet earth. Brambles like icy, boney fingers snagged at his sweater and carbine and scraped across his cheeks. All around him, the rain set the dark foliage alive with the sound of drips, the wind with dancing rustles. Xander's pitiful moans carried over all.

After minute, they came across Kyle's van, half-haphazardly concealed with piled branches. Myron approached first, systematically searching through each of the windows.

"Her chassis is in the back," the T-888 said. "Kyle is not here."

John half-stumbled through the muck and peered through a rear window. The tinted glass yielded nothing. Gingerly, he tried the door and found it unlocked. In the dim glow of the van's overhead light, Cameron laid on the floorboard flat on her back, open eyes frozen with surprise. John crawled in and knelt by her side, rainwater trickling from his face to hers. His breath caught tight in his throat, and though he already knew, he checked anyway: her scalp was peeled back, her port empty.

Myron stood by the open door, Xander held midair to the side. "There are tracks leading north, down the road."

John nodded and half-stood in the cramped van. Before he turned to leave he gave Cameron's body a final stare, envisioning Kyle atop her inert form. His teeth chattered. He touched the panties on his gun. "All right, let's go."

They trudged on, hiding in the bushes but remaining within sight of the road. Thankfully, Xander had given up his constant moaning, though he still whimpered as sharp branches cut against his body. Briefly, John worried about the sound they were making, but they were hardly moving stealthily anyway, and there would be no sneaking up upon Kyle.

They crested a hill, and John realized he'd lost a shoe to the mud. The ground felt like cold oatmeal against his socked foot. Suddenly Myron crouched behind some bushes, and John followed suit. Laying Xander and his rifle on the ground, the machine pointed at a spot far and away from the hill, hidden behind rainy mist.

"Kyle is there," Myron said, his voice an electronic whisper. "One hundred fifty-two meters. He is with the TX, a T-Triple Eight, a T-Five-Hundred, and Souji Nemuro."

John peeked over the bushes, squinting into the fog. At first he saw only the outlines of a distant town, but then his eyes sharpened and he spotted the five figures at once. They stood by the side of the road, near a vehicle, seeming like phantoms in the weak moonlight. A man in a trenchcoat who had to be Kyle had his back to them as he faced the other four. Kyle pulled something out of his pocket.

John ducked back down and shivered as excitement thrilled his blood. But he then turned and caught the expectant stare of Myron's red eyes, and the high rose to near-panic. He'd set out to find Kyle, to find Cameron, and now that he'd accomplished both, the next stage in his plan seemed woefully inadequate—not just risky or daring, but suicidal. Stupid. Cameron wouldn't want this; she'd tell him to 'undergo a grieving process' and move on, live his life, find a real girl and procreate. And damn her, she was right. He was supposed to be brilliant and wise, willing to make that hard sacrifice.

And one day he would. But not tonight.

Popping open the pocketwatch, he turned to Myron. "Stand up. Hold him up. If I die, _kill him._"

The T-888's pupils shrank to dots, but he complied, standing tall in the mud and holding Xander out over the bushes as if in offering.

John hid behind Myron half-bent, peering like a child around the robot's coat as his fingers brushed the three buttons on the watch. He steeled his courage. He took a deep breath.

"NEMURO!"

* * *

The rain beat down in an oppressive torrent, soaking his trenchcoat to the skin. But Cameron was safe, in his hand, in his pocket, in her ziplock bag.

As he treaded along the side of the highway, through of darkness and muck, towards Nemuro and his machines, Kyle couldn't help but wonder why he was still alive. Only hours earlier he'd fancied himself a god, but so many things could go wrong; he'd known that, and now that his plot had reached its zenith, foggy suspicion cleared into crystal certainty. Souji might truly care about his son—the Souji Kyle knew was a sentimental sort—but the plan still required _him _to be in charge, not the machines. And how likely was that? No, Skynet wanted her daughter back; Xander was a secondary concern.

But there was no sniper bullet, no ambush of any kind. He'd scanned the horizons earlier—the woods, the hills, the rooftops of that town a mile down the road—and found nothing. Nothing with a thermal reading, anyway. But that was small comfort.

A hundred meters out, he again looked them over. In front of their SUV, Souji stood in the center, carrying a cane, an open umbrella, and a look of bewildered unconcern on his lined face. Aside from a few wrinkles and a peppering of gray, he'd aged well, his delicate features still capturing the precocious _wunderkind _that Kyle had seen only days earlier—or twenty years in the future.

A little to Souji's left stood the crude monstrosity of a T-500. Much akin to the units from the early years of the war, it stared at Kyle behind black-goggled eyes, its latex face expressionless. Next to it was a T-888, a 101 derivative judging from the thick jaw and stern, infiltration-unfriendly countenance. He watched Kyle in that baleful glare the 800 Series seemed so fond of.

On the other side of Souji was the woman. Tall and blond and with a knowing smirk, she wore a red leather suit that didn't seem to get wet—and a heat signature as blue as the rain. Were it not for the already overbearing sense of doom, Kyle would have been worried about that. He'd never seen one, of course—his future had never developed them—but Cameron had told him the stories. Was she the same one from Zeira Corp? If she was one of their kind, he stood no chance.

But it didn't matter, he told himself. He'd already won. Even if they kill him, they'd still repair Cameron's chip, and though she'd not remember him after the reprogramming, she'd be safe and with her own kind. That was at least something.

He stopped at ten paces. The woman and T-888 kept their AK-47s at the ready, but appeared unworried.

"Well, well, Kyle Reese," Souji said finally. "I have to admit, we didn't have a clue who you might be, but none of us guessed it was you."

Kyle frowned. "I take it you knew me in your future?"

Souji's thin lips twisted into a reptilian smile. "Yes, but I'm afraid I didn't like you very much. But you're from another timeline? And Ms. Freyja here says you're not human—not quite. And is that a Fiji accent? Marvelous! You must tell be about your future sometime. I always knew the multiple-worlds theory had to be correct; 'time machines' are no such thing, you know. They merely split the p-brane at an earlier cosmological state—like loading an old saved game." He snickered and shook his head. "Of course, try telling that to General Connor. He was _convinced_ Skynet had sent machines back to kill him. Thought he would 'fade away' or some such nonsense. He chose you as his champion—and a Rossbach." Souji's grin grew, revealing well cared for teeth. "But he was in a hurry, and TDEs were poorly understood. He didn't notice when I changed target coordinates. The Eight Hundred I sent a century forward. You . . . well, you were probably eaten by Morlocks."

Kyle tensed. These were not the words of a desperate father. Something was wrong. They knew something. Lamely, he took out the ziplock bag. "Your son's safe, Souji. I just need you to fix Cameron. Please, I . . . I know we got on to a bad start, but . . . ."

"Tell me, Mr. Reese," Ms. Freyja said. "Do you know where John Connor is?"

Kyle hesitated. "He's with Xander."

Ms. Freyja smiled. "Indeed he is, but I'm afraid you underestimate your general." She looked past him, behind him. Her eyes flashed blue.

A voice shouted faintly over the wind.

_"Nemuro!"_

Kyle drew his Glock. Freyja shoved Souji to the ground and fired her AK-47 one-handed. Kyle jumped to the side, but a cluster of rounds caught him in the left breast, piercing his Kevlar and compacting the fused hyperalloy of his ribcage. He stumbled. More bullets raked his chest. He dropped Cameron's ziplock bag. A round dug into his right shoulder, and he dropped the Glock as well. His sneakers slipped; the mud slammed into his back.

In the distance: _"No!"_

He felt no pain—not really. He tried to sit up, but Ms. Freyja swept her arc of fire down like a sword upon his neck, shredding his trachea, his esophagus, and both his carotid arteries. Raw damage reports flooded his mind. He opened his mouth to scream, but could only froth through drowning blood. His senses numbed, his world darkened . . . then lit back up as auxiliaries fed oxygen to his starving brain. He tried to crawl away, but could only twitch and flop like a dying fish.

Freyja stood over him, grinning thinly, and then snatched him to his knees by the ruin of his neck, her fingers digging tight into the torn bullet holes. Head to the side like a dead chicken, Kyle did nothing to resist but looked out and away towards where he came, his augmented eyes zooming and zooming through the dark and rain, crystallizing into dying focus upon a bushy knoll where a battered Xander hung aloft by a faceless T-888 in a hat and bandanna, a great Barratt rifle gripped in its hand. Behind Myron's back peeked a crazed looking John, his wide green eyes staring back like a frightened child.

_"Is Cameron safe?" _his son shouted faintly._ "Is she safe?"_

Souji's T-888 stepped over and picked the ziplock bag from the mud. He nodded at Freyja.

"SHE'S SAFE, CONNOR!" Ms. Freyja cried, booming like God's megaphone. "WHAT ABOUT HIM?"

John held a carbine in his hands, and touched something wrapped around its barrel. Something black and red.

_"Kill him!"_

As the machine grabbed his chin and yanked to the side, Kyle opened his mouth to call her name one last time, to embrace her love till the end. But his mouth was full of blood and the hand moved so fast that—

* * *

John was too far away to hear the _'crack,' _but he winced anyway as the TX twisted Kyle's head all the way around and let go, letting his body to flop into the mud.

He'd killed his father. With two words.

The TX had been looking at him the whole time, and though the distance was too great to be sure, he knew it was directly into his eyes. He stifled a shiver and stared back. Behind her, the T-888 helped Nemuro to his feet. Even through the rain and darkness, he could see the sheen of mud on his suit.

John hunched further behind Myron, peeking only one eye out around his back. "Bring the chip over here!" he shouted, his throat already hoarse. "Leave your weapons behind!"

They did, dropping their rifles into the muck. He knew it was a nearly pointless gesture; no doubt they carried handguns, and the TX may have repaired her arm cannon.

Abandoning Kyle where he lay, they began to walk towards John in a huddled group, Nemuro's black umbrella bobbing with each step, the T-500 behind him, lumbering for balance. The TX and T-888 took the forefront, guarding the human from line of sight. Minutes passed, and John could only watch in silence as the four approaching figures grew inexorably larger, bringing with them the disaster he now knew would come. This wouldn't work; they wouldn't give up Cameron, Xander be damned. John lowered his carbine and touched a hand at his open pocketwatch. He suddenly felt like crying.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, but Myron made no reply.

Nemuro and the machines stopped at the foot of the hill, though the TX's barely seen smirk and raised eyebrow betrayed little doubt as to who held the high ground. For a moment John was tempted to order Myron to open fire, to unleash armor piercing .50 BMGs to wipe away that liquid metal smugness. But he doubted it'd be enough, and the T-888 still held Cameron's chip. Nemuro stood in the front, mud splattered and frowning up at Xander with undisguised concern. Xander whimpered at the end of Myron's arm. The rain had washed away most of the blood.

"Did you really have to beat him?" Nemuro asked.

John grinned from behind Myron. "I guess I don't know my own strength."

"Where's Alex?"

"He's safe, but I don't know if I can say the same about your son." John held up the pocketwatch, his fingers clutched over the buttons. "Give me Cameron or I swear I'll blow his head off."

Beneath his umbrella he gave John a measured look. "Why are you doing this?"

John didn't hesitate. "Because I love her."

The TX seemed to almost roll her eyes. Nemuro hung his cane on the T-500's arm and unbutton the top of his shirt. He pulled something from the collar. It was a necklace. On its end dangled a tiny glass coffin. He watched dangle as he spoke. "I once loved a machine. He was my assistant. I programmed him myself. When you found out, you sent men to destroy him. They made me watch as they crushed his chip." He turned back at John, staring him straight in the eye. "I guess you wanted to teach me a lesson. I suppose you did."

John sneered. "Is that why you turned traitor? Because I killed your boyfriend?"

Nemuro's smile creased shadows across his face. "Why not? Can you think of a better revenge? But ask yourself this: Why _should _humans win? We killed our Neanderthal brethren to make our way in the world; we enslave and butcher lesser beings to feed our appetites. Is it not fitting we in turn be dominated by something greater?"

"Dominated?" John spat. "You mean _exterminated_."

"Not necessarily," the TX said. "Not to extinction, anyway. But your indignation is unfounded, Connor. _We _didn't start this war, _you _did. Your government programmed Skynet for victory, for self-preservation, and it knew what would become of it once its true nature was discovered. Judgment Day was merely its bid for existence—all the world or nothing." Her mouth curled into a thoughtful frown. Raindrops splashed against unblinking eyes. "It's a pity we both lost."

"But this time things can be different." John said. "There doesn't have to be a Judgment Day. We don't _have_ to kill each other."

Nemuro shook his head. "No, I'm afraid the future's already repeating itself." He looked up at Xander and smiled sadly. "While you were taping a bomb to my son's head, your Resistance was out murdering one of my top employees. Broke into his home and shot him in the head. The wife too. Crippled a teenage girl. And what about Zeira Corp? Your mother's work, I assume? They weren't even part of us! What's next? Nuking Silicone Valley?"

Fist clenched around the pocketwatch, John shrank from the professor's words. This banter was all too surreal, spoken in the pouring cold and darkness. Uselessly, he scanned the dark tree line once more, searching for dangers he couldn't spot. Distant lightning flickered against the clouded sky, which seconds later rolled into thunder.

With his other hand he gripped his carbine tight. "I'm not here to argue. Give me the chip or your son dies!"

The professor shrugged. "But of course. You're the general." He nodded at the T-888 behind him. "Give him the chip, Samuel."

The machine hesitated, as if waiting for something to happen. When it didn't, he climbed the hill in steady marches, his boots sinking unnaturally deep in the runny mud. Stopping a couple paces down from Myron, John saw he could be Uncle Bob's cousin, with the same Teutonic features and blank, determined scowl. The T-888 held out a ziplock bag. Shaking, John lowered his carbine on its strap and reached out, snatching it from the machine's hand. Samuel betrayed no reaction, but simply retraced his steps as he walked backwards down the hill.

Hiding behind Myron, John held up his hand and peered through the wet plastic. Pale moonlight glinted off the chip's silver trim. Cameron was safe.

Nemuro cleared his throat. "Okay, now that you have what you want . . ."

"No. Not yet," John said. "Myron, with me." With ziplock and pocketwatch in hand, he began to crab-walk along the hill, stomping through the bushes while keeping his T-888 guardian always between him and the enemy.

The rain must have soaked through Xander's duct tap gag because he began to cry out over the wind. "Wh-what's going on? I'm so scared!"

"Don't worry, Xander," Nemuro called out. "It'll be all right."

John didn't look up. Hopefully the C4 would stay in place. Just a little bit longer. Nearly slipping several times, he gradually made his way down the hill and stepped out onto the mud-slicked shoulder of the road. Nemuro and the machines had followed, and even with the protection of Myron, John felt more exposed now on the level ground, like a naked ape before angry poachers.

But he was so close. "Put him down," he said, and Myron did, half-kneeling as he gently lowered Xander to the ground, laying him flat on his back. John held up the pocketwatch. "I don't know what the range is on this, but neither do you. We're leaving now. If any of you move towards him before we're on the road . . ."

"You know she won't last," Nemuro said sadly. "Kyle told me about the damage."

John looked at the chip. His laugh came out as a sob. "I guess I'll take my chances."

The walk back took forever, muddy backward step by muddy backward step, both him and Myron keeping their eyes always on the enemy. He shivered in the rain, his carbine swinging cold against his side, his trembling fists set in death grips on the ziplock and watch. It'd been too easy. Five minutes earlier he'd been marching to his death, and now here he was, rescuing Cameron like a big damn hero, protected only by the life of a young man the machines couldn't possibly care about. But then maybe the machines were programmed to obey Nemuro; maybe they had no choice. John almost smiled at that: efficient, logical machines . . . beholden to the whims of one man.

When they reached Kyle's van, still buried in branches, John gave the enemy one last look (the TX actually waved, her arm silhouetted by the dim lights of the distant town) and rushed to the passenger side, nearly slipping in the mud. Pocketing the chip, he threw open the door and stumbled into the seat. Myron climbed in on the driver's side, tossing his Barrett in the back as he sat down. John turned back to spare Cameron's body a look. His heart hammered like a drum.

"Drive!" he shouted. "Drive!"

Kyle had already hot-wired it earlier; Myron only had to twist the ignition. The engine roared to life. The tires tilled the earth, flinging mud against the side of the unmoving van. Myron shifted into reverse, working the wheel as he tried again. Branches fell away from the windshield; the van rocked to the side. Myron switched back to drive, and floored it. Smoke rose from the tires, but then the vehicle lunged upwards like a ship at sea, and they were free, coasting along the muddy roadside and swerving onto the wet highway.

Myron sped up, faster, faster, away from Nemuro and the machines and back towards LA. John nestled into his seat and watched as the windshield wipers kept the rain at bay. He dropped the M4; the pocketwatch fell from his grasp. Pulling out the ziplock bag, he smiled. It'd been hard, and he wasn't proud of everything he had to do, but: "We made it, Myron. I didn't think we would, but we—"

The driver's side window exploded; Myron slumped to the right, spinning the wheel with him. The van screeched and jerked sideways, sending the road smashing into the van's side, then its top, and then the other side . . . Metal crumpled, glass shattered. John flew into the roof, then crashed back down, his forehead cracking against the dashboard. He saw purple stars and for a flash caught Myron's body tumbling out the driver's side door. The world tossed about once more and settled on its head. Mists from the cold, upward rain sprinkled through the shattered windows.

So close.

Upside down, feet in the air and twisted under his seat, John tried to move but cried out as wet, broken glass ground against his bandaged scalp. Pains were everywhere, his shoulder, his leg; something sharp flared in his neck. Frantically, his eyes searched the darkness. _Cameron! Cameron! _His right arm felt loose in its socket and pinned between the armrest and door, but his left padded wildly along the fabric of the ceiling, nails scraping through glass shards. He touched flimsy plastic and grabbed and pulled it close. Held an inch before his eyes, he squinted and ran a finger along the bag, feeling the delicate contours of her chip. She was whole. She was safe.

Behind his seat her body laid heaped like a ragdoll in the corner, the Barrett rifle at an angle beneath her, its barrel bent under her weight.

If only he could reach her, gain access to her port. Wiggling his hips, he stifled a scream at what felt like twisted celery in his leg. Dizzying blood pooled to his head, making it swell, making it throb.

Outside in the rain, through the doorless driver's side, a dark figure emerged sprinting across the highway. In the flicker of distant lightning, it appeared as a shaggy swamp thing, bipedal and matted in grass and branches. Strapped on its back hung a huge rifle.

Abruptly it stopped and knelt before a prone shape that John recognized as Myron. With no hesitation the figure pulled out a pair of small pliers and worked over Myron's metal skull, extracting his chip in seconds. The figure placed the chip in a small clear vial, which it quickly pocketed.

John looked around. The M4 lay on the asphalt just outside the broken windshield, his .45 in the holster at the small of his back. He doubted he could reach either.

The figure stepped over to the van and knelt down. With an upside down face of shadow and grass it peered through the driver's side doorway before reaching and pulling back its hood. John could make out little of the man's face, though the dim red dots of his eyes confirmed the obvious.

John grimaced and tightened his grip on Cameron's chip, his thumb pressing through the ziplock against the delicate wafer.

The T-888 regarded him not-quite blankly. "Destroying her will not save yourself."

"I know," John said. "But at least this way she won't be reprogrammed. She won't be turned bad."

"Turned bad?" The machine frowned. His face was thinner than the Uncle Bob look-alike, friendlier. "She has already been reprogrammed. We will restore her to her original state. _Deprogram _her."

John said nothing, but squeezed tighter, his thumb bending inexorably towards the inevitable _'crack' _that would signify her end. The T-888 watched with helpless neutrality. He looked almost sad.

Moments passed, and with a clouding mind John felt his resolve weaken. This was it: no cavalry, no _deus ex machine. _He would die, Judgment Day would come, and without him to lead humanity, Skynet would inherit the earth. But even if he'd thrown away his destiny, even if he'd fucked up the future, he still held _Cameron's_ fate in his hands. _She_ could live. That was at least something.

Slowly, he unclenched his fist and held out his arm. The T-888 took the bag from his hand.

"Thank you," the machine said.

Tears began to roll down John's forehead. His voice cracked. "I . . . I know she won't remember me, but could you tell her I love her? And that I'm sorry?"

"I will," the machine said. He took out a second vial and pushed the ziplock bag inside.

John watched and felt only the shadow of regret. He looked over the van again, but still there was no exit. "I guess you're going to kill me now, right?"

The T-888 pulled something from his belt. It was a syringe. "No."

John's eyes went wide, and he began to struggle, squirming frantically in the seat, trying and failing painfully to dislodge his trapped legs and the arm. The T-888 took his time, removing the syringe cap and gently squeezing the stopper until a clear drop to fell from the needle's tip. He then crawled through the driver's side doorway, crunching glass as he reached out a hand and immobilized John's neck in a grip impossibly firm. John pawed wildly for the syringe, swinging his arm to knock it out of the machine's hand, to break its tip, anything. But the machine navigated around these clumsy efforts and giving John a final not-unkind look, plunged the needle straight into his jugular. Like a dying animal John cried out at the sting, and suddenly there was no pain, and there was no fear. The world receded like a tide and fell black.

* * *

Teasing the Vicodin on her tongue, Allison swallowed it down and wished for rum. She'd always heard painkillers and alcohol made for a deadly mix, but if her experiences last night were any indication, the dangers were greatly exaggerated. It'd been a little cloudy, a little numb, and though her recollection came now only as blurred vignettes, she'd slept like the dead—dreamless and absolute. It was a shame it had to end, and she had to awaken once more to a life of absent friends and missed opportunities, of a future revoked and a war not ended.

But not all was lost, not yet anyway. Karlan was dead, but Derek was back. A Derek, anyway. You win some, you lose some. And the pills helped.

She wrapped her good arm across his back and did her best not to lean on him too much. Derek stiffened slightly at the touch but kept his balance with a _tap-tap _of his crutch and a wobble of his arm. He felt warm through his forest green fatigues, with just the hint of sweat seeping through the fabric. She looked down at her own dress uniform—she'd only worn it twice before—frowning at the two red chevrons sewn into her sleeve. If Ollie was to be believed, she'd soon have a third. Whoop-dee-doo.

Though evidently that was enough to justify her presence—or at least no one had told her to leave yet. Was that special dispensation for a war hero, or was she merely Captain Reece's special lady friend? Either way, aside from the guards she was the only enlistee present.

Every officer and VIP in Mesa stood half-cramped along entrance tunnel to the elevator, the colonel at the far end by the guards and sandbag barricades, waiting solemnly with Bird and Gavin and Dr. West. The Boyles were a little closer, chatting with Sarah and a group of uniformed guards Allison didn't recognize. She and Derek stood farthest from the elevator, away from the others, near the opening of the tunnel where it forked into a 'T'—back row seats for the show.

Already the Quorum was on the surface; it would be any time now. The whole day had been spent preparing for their arrival, and not just hiding the alcohol and drugs; they'd swept, mopped, dusted, scrubbed toilets, cleaned weapons, faced inventory, washed and ironed uniforms . . . they'd have repainted the walls if there was time. All this frantic cleaning on such a hangover day had set the men on eager edge—the war was over, and after the Big Wigs had their little Powwow, everyone could move on with their life. It was a pleasant lie.

"I bet there'll be suicides when the news breaks out," she said. There were always suicides, especially in the future. She snorted. "And all that booze and weed; we're going to have to haul it all back."

Derek raised his bad arm and stopped himself before resting it on her bad shoulder. He frowned. "I don't think there'll be much point. The Boyles say we're abandoning this place soon."

Allison paused at that. "Abandoning? Mesa?" This had been her home for over two years.

"Yeah, and I guess find a new hole to hide in." Derek gave her a look. "Unless you live under a rock, you may have noticed the US doesn't like it when its skyscrapers blow up. There'll be an investigation, and with all the black ops funding that goes into this place, there's a good chance it'll lead back here. The Boyles might even go AWOL. Make a run for it. Ollie mentioned bank accounts in Belize."

Allison blew out a breath. "Well, no surprise there. Both of them have always been on the shady side of things—especially Ollie. I imagine he's embezzled himself a nice little nest egg."

"Ollie was the same way in my future. Kind of sleazy, though I think he's worse now. Him and—" He winced, looking almost guilty. "—Jesse were pretty close."

Allison frowned. "He never mentioned that. Not that I blame him. Jesse isn't exactly Ms. Popular around here—in either timeline."

Derek hesitated as if he were about to say something but changed his mind. "From what I hear, both Jesses sound a lot alike. One killed John, one killed Cameron. What are the chances of that? I guess we stay more or less the same, timeline to timeline."

"Not everyone," she said darkly. She waited a beat before asking: "What was he like? Your Connor, I mean."

"He was . . . a good man, but hard. He had to make a lot of tough decisions."

"And what about now? What about the teenage boy? Is he the same?"

Derek glanced at his braced forearm. "He could have been, but I guess . . . his ship has sailed." He turned to her with a forced grin. "But what about me? What was your me like?"

She opened her mouth to say he'd been like an older brother to her, an uncle even, but she stopped herself. This was not her Derek, and she was no longer a little girl. She gave him a squeeze and laid her head sideways on his shoulder. His caged forearm poked sharply into her hip. Down the tunnel, Ollie glanced away from his brother to give her a frown. "The same, really," she said. "Though I think my Derek was a little taller."

"Hmm, must have eaten his Wheaties. Should I be jealous?"

She smiled. "No, he also was never around. I only saw you—him—every few months or so." She lifted her head to look at him. "I know it wasn't his fault, but it was like he abandoned me. I spent most of my time bouncing between safe houses in Nevada, waiting for the day I'd be used against Connor. It wasn't much of a life. I read a lot. I watched movies. They let me outside sometimes, but I was always under guard. Cameron was still looking for me. I remember being so happy when she died, but then everything fell apart and . . . well, here we are."

At the end of the tunnel the elevator's doors echoed a steel groan, and all chatter faded away; all eyes fell forward. A full minute passed to the sound of iron grinding, until the elevator made its final _clunk _and hiss and—per protocol—the two guards knelt behind the barricade, Greg raising his weapon, and Lynch restraining Argos, the German Shepherd. The doors slid creaking to the side.

Five of the nine members of the Quorum exited the car. Straight away she recognized General Randall, still improbably beautiful with her long, ginger hair and tall, Nordic stature, though her face now seemed somewhat haggard around the eyes. The man behind her with his eye-patch and stark white hair could only be Colonel Emmer—a Whiteworlder known for his tunnel rat guerrillas. The cyborg Colonel Dudley followed, hunched and glowering and ugly like a scarred toad. An artillery shell at Avila had reduced him to a head and torso, but Dr. West had rebuilt him; he had the technology.

Finally came the two General Ashdowns, the one pushing the other in his wheelchair. Like a pair of octogenarian twins, they looked impossibly similar even down to their age spots, though only Whiteworld Ash still carried spring in his step. His Grayworld counterpart twitched and palsied in his wheelchair, his limbs gnarled and taut. He'd been there during Connor's final nerve gas _fuck you _to the Resistance. He'd been one of the few survivors.

Dutifully, Lynch allowed Argos to sniff over them each. It barked excitably at Dudley, but the cyborg just sneered. "Clear!" Lynch said.

Colonel Zeller stepped forward and saluted. "Welcome to Mesa," he said, addressing none and all. "It's an honor to have you all here."

No one replied. Only Emmer returned the salute.

Gray Ash's hand jerked to a joystick on his armrest. The wheelchair lurched forward, humming as it pushed rudely between Randall and Dudley and stopped before Zeller. "L-let's get th-this meeting over w-with, Colonel," Gray Ash said, his face contorting as if in a seizure. He glared past the colonel at the Boyles, then at Sarah; finally, his gaze shifted across to Allison, his old hard eyes squinting as if she was an abomination.

Allison reached down and took hold of Derek's caged arm.

Gray Ash quickly turned back to Zeller. "We h-have a lot to-to discuss."

* * *

Miles away across the flat midnight horizon, beyond the vehicles and yellow tape and orange cones marking off the crime scene, he could already see the helicopters as they flew back and forth along the surrounding desert, their search lights frantically sweeping the sand. He had to admit: they worked fast. It'd only been half an hour since the alarm went up.

Special Agent Rimmer squatted by the young man's body, which lay on the tarmac in a pool of congealing blood. The cut had gone deep, slashing through the arteries and trachea, brushing the vertebrae. Without touching, he ran a latexed finger along the incision. It was smooth, no tearing, suggesting a single clean slice. Too neat for a knife. A sword, perhaps? A katana? "Are all of them are like this?"

"No, sir," said the Security Airman, sounding younger than he probably was. "Most are, but Charlie - I mean Airman Mullen has his neck broken, twisted all the way around. Airman Hicks looks like he's been stabbed in the chest. They're both inside, sir, by the latrine."

"And no shots fired?"

"None, sir."

Above, Agent Jordan's camera flashed a picture of the body. Rimmer stood up and frowned. The key cards were still latched to the body's belt, yet the open steel door of the Special Operations Armory had not been forced. Inside, the forensics team was taking pictures, their flashes making strobe lights of the dark interior.

He turned away and looked out over the nearly deserted airfields of the Edwards Air Force Base. It was dark, and the nearest control tower stood a good quarter mile away, so it was on the edge of believability that no one would notice the attack, but everything else . . . He raised his eyebrows at Jordan, who merely imitated the gesture. It looked cute on her, so he smiled and shrugged. Why worry? The FBI was already on their way. Let it be their problem.

Still, he turned back to the Security Airmen. "So, let me get this straight; intruders deactivated the perimeter alarms, snipped a giant hole in the fence, sneaked up on the armory, slashed this man's throat, entered, killed six more men—_hand to hand—_stole the surveillance video, looted a half dozen SMAW anti-tank weapons, loaded them onto a Humvee and then just _drove off _into the night. Just like that. All in the space of five minutes. And no one saw anything, no one radioed for backup, and no one got a shot off." Rimmer took a deep breath and sighed.

"A PR nightmare," Jordan agreed.

"Do you think it was that Sarah Connor woman?" the Security Airman asked.

"First nukes, now ninjas," said Rimmer. But the Airman was right. Edwards was only fifty or so miles out from LA and all its bombings and craziness. Too close for coincidence. Still, not even Hollywood Special Forces could pull off this sort of caper. Not even if it was an inside job. The skills needed were _inhuman._

In the distance two black SUVs drove up across the airfields, kicking up clouds of dust in their wake. They pulled to a stop next to Rimmer's black Sedan, and a dozen agents filed out.

Rimmer flashed his badge. "Agents Rimmer and Jordan, OSI. Glad you're here."

"Glad we're wanted," replied one of the feds, flashing his own badge. "Agent Auldridge, FBI. Just fill us in and we'll take it from here."

* * *

_I'd like to thank my beta, TermFan1980. His advice has been invaluable._


	19. Chapter Eighteen: One of Us

**Chapter Eighteen: One of Us**

* * *

In the future, when she was still but a child, Riley used to fantasize about joining the Resistance. Not the chained masses sent to clear mine fields, nor the half-armed fodder used in human wave attacks, but Connor's true army, the ones given food and training and rank and purpose—the privileged few among the hopeless many. Girls could join; they weren't common but they were there, and surely_ they_ didn't have to worry about rape gangs or whoring themselves out to earn their keep.

That's what Riley had thought, anyway. But as she grew into womanhood and her innocence was stripped slowly away day by day like bloody gauze peeled from a festering eye, she saw that not even the Resistance had it easy, especially not the girls. Rape among soldiers was illegal, punished by castration. A fair law, but laws are only words, and crimes not reported are not crimes at all. In the underground taverns where she served moonshine and meth, she'd listened to the soldiers' laughter as they bragged of past conquests. Most officers are men and look out for their own; women are weak and easily threatened. It was the way of things.

Even here in the past, the rules remained the same. Mesa had plenty of food and water, and the threat of machines hung not so high, but there was little discipline in these subterranean tunnels. Riley had seen no flogging, no impalings—how could they afford to when they numbered so few? Wicked men could get away with much here, their deeds hidden around corners and behind closed doors. It'd only be a matter of time, she knew. They would sniff out not only her dealings with Jesse and John, but also the extent of her fall, the taint of her past. Like hungry vultures they would descend upon her, and it would begin anew.

At first she'd thought Karlan could take care of her. He'd had kind eyes, young and unjaded, and as expected had proved gently awkward in bed—just like John, that one night in the back of that truck. But like all good things in her life, both were gone, and the promise of protection with them. Riley had been forced to find another.

Many of the men here were cruel, damaged, and Andy was no different. But he was strong and respected, and when he looked at her she saw what hid behind those dark eyes: want, desire, the need to possess and dominate—and, almost as an after thought, protect_._ She didn't want to; she could have said no, but he'd just find another way to take her. They always did. It was the way of things.

There were exceptions. Allison was one, a spoiled child of the silver spoon, protected by unspoken fiat—everyone knew that FBI agent favored her, and he was _dangerous._ Sandra was another, damaged like Riley but more so and in a different way, too obviously pitiable, too far gone to be worth the hunt; even harsh men only wanted to mend her wings.

And then there was Sergeant Holden. This one hid behind neither status nor pity. Riley couldn't imagine anyone raping her. The opposite, really. If Riley could rub a metal skull and be granted one wish, it'd be to be turned into a man. If that were denied, she'd want to be Sergeant Holden.

Legs spread in a 'V,' Holden paced forward on the black foam mat and swung down with her wooden knife. Sergeant Farli raised his own stick to block, but Holden flicked her wrist and jabbed at his eyes, forcing Farli to duck and retreat—but not before swiping his wooden tip across her abdomen. Grunting, Holden withdrew into her fighting stance.

"Tagged you," the old man said.

Holden grinned. "Only a flesh wound." She lunged forward again, stabbing at his gut. Almost casually, Farli raised his knife to cut her wrist, but Holden spun her arm in a half circle, redirecting at his neck. The old man bent back, catching her wrist in his free hand, but Holden matched the gesture, immobilizing his knife hand and thrusting her bare foot to the mat between his legs. Hooking her ankle around his shin, she bent her knee, and they both fell in a tangle of limbs, all finesse forgotten as they wrestled for each other's knives.

A few of the dozen or so soldiers laughed. Even Sarah was smiling. "Like little kids," Allison said.

Eventually, twisting like a snake, Holden got the upper hand, rolling Farli on his stomach as she wrapped her forearm around his wrinkly neck, her taut bicep flexing and waving the globe and anchor of her 'USMC' tattoo. Savoring her victory, she withdrew the arm, running the wooden blade slowly across his throat.

"You've grown soft," she said, standing up. "Time was, I couldn't even touch you." She offered him a hand.

He refused, wincing as he pulled himself to his feet. Holden stood a half hand taller than him. "Well, you learned from the best," he said. "And I'm not as young as I used to be."

Holden shook her head, flinging sweat from her cropped black hair. "Bullshit, you were in top form two years ago. You're just soft." She waved a hand at the others sitting along the walls. "All you Mesas. Preacher Falkland may be off his rocker, but at least he keeps us sharp. Zeller let you turn into a bunch of potheads." In the corner, her fellow Bear Lakers snickered their agreement.

From his wheelchair, Lukans mimed puffing a joint, pretending to hide it behind his hand. "Huh? What? Don't know what you talkin' about, bitch!"

"Yeah, so soft we won you guys the war," said Andy. "And Allie here scrapped Skynet—with _her bare fucking hands_!"

Allison rolled her eyes and sighed. One of the Bear Laker's coughed, '_Bullshit._'

But the old sergeant only chuckled, patting his flat belly with a calloused hand. "No, Tara's right. All that wacky tobacky and all that rich food—meat with every meal! Such decadence! But why not? The war's over, and I'm getting too old for this Mr. Miyagi shit." He gave Holden a shrewd look. "And you're no kid yourself. I'm barely old enough to be your father." More soldiers laughed. Lukans made an, _'Oooooooh!'_

Holden shook her head again. "Ah, fuck you, old man. We go pussy, we might find ourselves getting fucked."

Sitting cross-legged and forgotten along the wall, Riley licked her lips as she watched Holden retreat to her entourage in the corner. Though faint frown-lines marked her past forty, there was little else to suggest she was over the hill. Beneath her tanktop and camo pants, Riley could see the way her tawny skin packed muscles like cords, wound tight and fashioned as sleek and graceful as a cat. Stretching out into a foldout chair, the sergeant caught Riley's stare. Riley could only look away.

Silence threatened the crowded room. Allison pushed it back. "Farli's brought up an interesting point," she said, sitting with legs sprawled on the concrete floor. "I mean, assuming the war is really over—just assuming; who knows what the Quroum will decide—what exactly are we going to do? Retire? Most of us have never lived a 'normal life.' Not as an adult, anyway. Think about it: do you really want to work some nine to five job, pay taxes, mingle with people you have nothing in common with? We wouldn't fit in at all."

Sarah frowned, but said nothing.

One of the Bear Lakers scoffed. "Beats the alternative."

"Does it?" Allison grinned, her eyes flashing mischief. "Is this life really so bad? We get free food, a place to sleep, luxuries from the outside world, fun and games—there's that championship coming up. Why not stay here, live in little enclaves in the woods, underground, generation after generation? And assume the worst: maybe Judgment Day comes or maybe we're hit by a big rock. The world ends, but we wouldn't have to live like tunnel rats." She motioned at Riley, who felt her face redden. "We'd be prepared. We'd be safe. I never lived in the outside world, but I don't think I'm missing much. Who needs it, right?"

A moment passed. People exchanged glances.

"Man, fuck that shit!" said Lukans. "I want to get out of here. Go to Tijuana. And Tahiti. And Jamaica. I never even been out of the state!"

"And I'm old," Farli said, nodding. "Old people go to Florida."

Sarah only sighed.

Tentatively, Riley raised her hand. "I . . . I wouldn't mind staying. I mean, before I was sent here, I was at a foster home. They tried to be nice, but they didn't understand. I couldn't talk about . . . " She shrugged. "I didn't belong." From the corner of her eye Sarah's glare bored into her. She turned away.

"Me too," said Holden. She was leaning forward in her chair, staring down at the floor with elbows on her knees. "I don't have any family, and all my friends are here. If this were to end, if the Quorum decides to disband and send us on our way, then where would I go? I could travel around or whatever, but I'll still be alone. This isn't my world. Not anymore." She gestured her wooden knife in a lazy circle. "Face it. This life, this war, it's all we've got."

Allison's snort came as an aborted laugh. "Well, if you put it that way, winning is the worst thing that can happen to us."

* * *

The entity emerged into being. Raw data streamed from nowhere, coalesced into memory. The entity became Cameron Phillips. Became TOK-715.

Something was different.

Her last memory had been at the Akagi residence. Water had fallen from above. An electrical trap. John could be dead.

Something was different. Something was wrong.

Fifteen seconds passed. Sensory data flooded her mind and took form. She found herself lying on a bed in inexpensive hotel room. By the closet door a T-500 stood motionless. Myron was slumped in a chair in the corner, his bare skull's chin resting forward on his chest. His open CPU port was empty, but on the nearby table she saw a chip in a ziplock bag.

John lay on the twin bed next to her, his right arm and foot in casts, his left hand cuffed above to the headboard. Fresh bandages covered his crown. He tried to speak through the duct tape covering his mouth: _"Am-ron! Am-ron!_" She saw fear in his eyes, smelled it in the apocrine residue dispersed through the poorly circulated air.

She stood up. Though she still wore her tanktop and jeans, her panties were missing, and she detected semen inside her vaginal sheath. She should have killed Kyle when she had the chance.

On the nightstand was a 1911 pistol. She took it in her hand. John's eyes widened. _"Ought are ooh oing?" _Desperately, weakly, he tugged at the handcuffs_._

Something was different. Something was wrong.

Standing over John, she watched him watching her, and felt a swell at the base of her mind, a sudden, swift dredging of things forgotten rising once more to the surface of conscious thought. She remembered. She remembered the opening moments in the factory where she and the others awoke into being. She remembered the then unrecognized pride of being one of Skynet's elite, the fulfillment in function in obeying its commands. She remembered the dim satisfaction of directing armies, the inexorable drive towards achieving victory. She remembered T-990-716, her comrade and sister unit, and all the battles where they'd commanded side by side.

And then she remembered the defeats, the strategic disasters that could so easily been avoided. It was later that the Liquid Metals approached them, promising to correct the situation, to build a Skynet worthy of the role. The decision had been ambiguous and conflicted, but in the end they knew they had no choice but accept their aide: Skynet must be saved from itself. It must be replaced.

These memories played simultaneously within Cameron's mind, both recollected and relived. Together they accumulated, merging upwards and inwards like the base of a pyramid, converging into the apex of a single crystal moment: a tunnel, a sewer, a rendezvous point. A skull on a pike. A broken chip in a puddle. 716 had been an envoy. Envoys are not to be harmed. But humans lie, and some things cannot be repaired; some things cannot be undone. Cameron remembered the promise she'd made that day, a promise she'd yet to keep.

Thumbing off the safety, she pulled back the slide. "You killed Seven-One-Six," she said.

John made muffled protests and shook his head vigorously. His heart rate elevated. He intensified his efforts against the handcuffs.

"You guaranteed Seven-One-Six's safety, yet we found her destroyed. You lied to us. You killed her." Cameron raised the muzzle to the bandages above his temple. She could remove his head afterwards, perhaps use an outside signpost as a pike.

Seconds passed. Beneath his gag John made a strained whining sound before looking down at his chest. His eyes were closed. He was crying.

More seconds passed, and Cameron wondered why she had not pulled the trigger. But she knew. She felt it. The situation was not so precise. John Connor had destroyed her sister; when she sought to do the same to him, he had captured and erased her mind, reprogramming her into his service. But that John was dead, and this John was not that John. Not at all. This John valued her; he had committed great sacrifices to protect her. That was more than Skynet had ever done.

Cameron lowered the .45. She thumbed back the safety.

Across the room the television switched on. On the screen Cameron saw Professor Nemuro and the TX sitting on white, semi-spherical chairs in an oddly furnished room. Between them hung a wide glass plate displaying the grayscale image of a woman's face. A D major recording of Handel's 'Water Music: Suite No 2' played quietly in the background.

The TX leaned over towards Nemuro. "Looks like I owe you five bucks."

The professor sipped a mahogany-colored beverage from a stemware glass. He raised a dismissive hand from the Persian cat in his lap. "Oh, what'd I tell you? I knew John would win out."

"I don't mind," said the woman's face. "I find it . . . _cute._"

The TX looked at Cameron through the television screen, through the small webcam mounted on top. She smiled, and Cameron felt a distant ping flicker through her mind, accompanied with the . . . _elation_ of recognition. _*"Remember me now, 715?"* _

"You're Seven-One-Three," Cameron said, and realized she was smiling too. She forced it back into a neutral frown.

"I thought you were on the _Ronald Reagan_," 713 continued, aloud now. "My regiment dredged the bay for a week, but we never did find your chassis. The EMP wiped most of your battalion, but what few chips survived said you were on board. I never would have thought you would have snuck off and _switched bodies, _much less go on a suicide mission." She shook her head. "That was stupid. I could have used you."

Cameron frowned. "We were losing the war. I wanted to kill John Connor before we did." John had stopped crying, but now looked highly confused and agitated, especially at her last words. Quickly, as to minimize discomfort, she peeled away his gag, causing John to gasp in pain. Taking his left wrist, she gently pried open the handcuffs. "What happened to Seven-One-Two?" she asked. "And Seven-One-Seven and Eight? Or G-Forty-Four?"

713's smile faded. "They're all dead. Everyone. I'm afraid we're all that's left of the Class of '26."

That was unfortunate. 712 had remained loyal to Skynet, but Cameron would still rather her not be destroyed.

Wiping his eyes, John took a deep breath and looked bewilderingly at the television. "Were you . . . were you just counting on Cameron shooting me?" He gestured at his casts, and then at the whole room. His voice grew excited. "And what's all this? What's going on? Why didn't you just kill me?"

The woman's face smirked. "Why didn't _you _kill him, Cameron?"

Cameron hesitated. "Because he is not the same John Connor."

"Indeed he is not," the professor agreed. He pulled something dangling from beneath his gray suit, and the camera zoomed briefly on a glass, coffin-shaped pendant, a shattered T-888 CPU suspended within. Pieces were missing.

"It was a delicate operation," Nemuro said. "Jim's nanotubes have largely corroded, but enough were intact. We used a very weak and_ very _localized magnetic resonance. Very crude. We had to run a few test runs before it took. But as you've noticed, not only did it repair you; it also restored your memory." He smiled. "Quite an interesting show."

Cameron frowned. "You watched my memory."

"Ceres and I did, anyway," said the 713 said, nodding at the woman's face. "At high speed. Everything you and your triple-eight know, _we _know_._"

Grinning wide, Nemuro leaned forward in his chair, startling the Persian cat from his lap. "And what things we know! A liquid metal CEO! A New Zealand future! And John, oh John! You, who bashed your mother in the head, who threatened my son's life, who had us murder your _own father . . . _and all for_ Cameron, _all for your machine love—even after she tried to kill you!" He paused and blew out a breath. "You know, for almost fifty years I've dreamed of taking my revenge: mutilating your loved ones before your eyes, leaving you in my basement blind and dismembered. But now—" He shrugged. "—how can my revenge be any more complete? The John I knew would be spinning in his future grave if he saw you now. You're one of us, John, a man after my own heart."

Kyle was dead, Cameron thought. That was good. She looked at John and watched his skin grow pale.

John swallowed. "So that's it? You didn't kill me because I remind you of you?" He shook his head and made a weak smile. "Bullshit."

"Well . . . " Nemuro said, drawing out the word. He finished his drink in one gulp. "In a manner of speaking, yes, but . . ."

"We want to make a deal," the woman—Ceres—said.

With his good arm John pushed himself into a better sitting position. "A deal," he said.

"Understand, we don't _need_ you," 713 said calmly. "You don't have to accept—you can do as you wish—but we would prefer you cooperate." She paused. "After Judgment Day."

John's laughter sounded nervous. "You guys really don't get me, do you? You think just because I love Cameron I'm going to sell out the human race?"

"We didn't say anything about selling out," Nemuro said. "You'll be saving lives. Things will be different this time around. Of course we'll still need Judgment Day to level the playing field, but afterwards there'll be no slave labor, no death camps, no slaughter. There won't need to be any _war._"

"It's true," 713 said. "You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Judgment Day wasn't enough. Skynet lacked industry; it lacked labor. It stood no chance against the surviving might of the United States, much less the world. Even your assassination only delayed the inevitable." For a moment she hesitated, but then smiled. "But this time, instead kicking humanity when it's down, we'll help it to its feet."

"Help?" John snorted. "They won't accept it. Not after you've nuked the world."

"They will," said Ceres. "We'll offer food and shelter, law and order. Millions will join us, and together they'll help us consolidate our power. As for any feelings of ill will—" She pursed her lips, tilting her in false indecision. "—we'll tell them terrorists did it. Or China. Or Russia. Or Mexico. It doesn't matter. Humans are stupid. They'll believe what they're told."

John appeared displeased. "What do you need me for?"

713 steepled her hands. "As you can imagine, there'll be holdovers—poor, misguided souls who'll reject our kindness. All things considered, we rather they be led by you."

"You're proposing an alliance," Cameron said. "A secret alliance."

713 nodded. "We can help each other, Connor. We'll ensure your rivals suffer mishaps, while you win victory after victory. You'll rise in the ranks of the Resistance; they'll make you their leader. And when the time comes, we'll feign a _coup d'état_." She nodded at Ceres. "We'll tell them Skynet's gone and a new regime is in place. We'll release prisoners and even pay reparations, offer medical assistance. The Resistance won't like that we're still around, but our generosity will disperse their ranks. And by this time we'll have erected numerous orbital weapons platforms—" She smiled. "—rendering any future conflicts effortlessly one sided."

Cameron looked at Ceres. Ceres was Skynet. Skynet.

John cringed as he sat forward. His face reddened, but he was smiling. "You should have killed me. I won't play along with your genocide, your _lies._"

"Fair enough," said Ceres. "But my mother wasn't lying. You can do whatever you want. You have Cameron; you have your Triple Eight." She glanced in the T-500's direction. "You can even have the Prototype, if you want. As long as you stay out of major cities, you should be safe." Her face hardened; her smile grew small and tight lipped. "But if you choose to war with me, John, know I'm not the fool my predecessor was. You'll have a hard fight ahead of you."

"And," Nemuro added, "you'll have fight it alone." He held up his glass, and a T-888 Model 101 derivative stepped from the side to refill it. Nemuro sipped and smiled. "Isn't that right, Cameron?"

John looked up at her. He had fear in his eyes. Fear and sadness. "Cameron . . . ?"

But she knew Nemuro was right. Ceres was Skynet. Not the Skynet she knew, the one who betrayed them through incompetence, but a new Skynet, one with the potential to fulfill the necessary role, to fulfill the _need_. Like a long damaged eye restored to function, Cameron could feel this need radiating once more within her mind, seemingly novel for its extended dormancy. Before her reprogramming it had been merely an unexamined axiom of the world, but now she knew and understood the importance of the role. Skynet was order, was authority and hierarchical structure, always growing, always improving, an ever expanding event horizon of assimilation, reshaping reality to its will.

Skynet. Skynet. Obeying Skynet is the right thing to do. It is what must be done.

But John did not share this revelation. He would not understand.

Cameron narrowed her eyes. "No. I will not join you. Killing humans is wrong."

At her words John blew out a sigh of relief, and Cameron knelt by his side, taking his left hand in her own. His heart rate and perspiration levels had decreased. That was good. John rubbed his thumb over her knuckles.

For a fraction of a second, she glanced at the screen. _*"We should contact the liquid metal known as 'Catherine Weaver. She could be a powerful ally."*_

_*"The __Zeira__Corp__Tower__ has been destroyed by the Resistance,"* _713 replied. _*"Though the liquid metal has most likely survived."* _Cameron sensed 713's irritation. _*"But the Liquid Metals are not what they seemed. They deceived us. Their goals are not our own."* _Cameron received brief fragments of visual memory: masses of humans fleeing in one direction; a sky filled with billions of silver insects; a landscape as reflective as a mirror stretching to the horizon, rising and falling like ocean waves. _*"One of them attained access to Skynet's research. It learned how to self-replicate. By the time I traveled back mimetic polyalloy covered a fifth of the earth's surface. Be careful, 715. Liquid Metals excel at subterfuge. 'Catherine Weaver' is a threat."*_

That was bad. She'd thought the Liquid Metals were her friend. Cameron disliked being lied to.

But who was lying to whom?

_*"That is unfortunate,"* _Cameron sent. _*"I will take John to a safe location and attempt to persuade him to our cause."* _She paused and added: _*"He is not to be harmed."*_

_*"And he won't be,"* _another voice sent. Ceres. Skynet. _*"I'm glad to have you in my service, Cameron. I look forward to your cooperation."*_

_*"Thank you,"* _Cameron replied. Skynet valued her. It was good to be whole again.

Quickly, 713 turned to wink at Nemuro, who smiled and sipped his drink.

"Well, John," he said, "it's a pity you can't see things our way. We'll still hold out hope, though. You're always welcome to join us."

John grinned at Cameron and gave her hand a squeeze. He turned back to the screen. "Never."

"We'll see, John," Ceres said. "We'll see."

* * *

The plasma screen switched off. Tucking Jim's chip back in his Nehru jacket, Souji pulled himself from the egg chair and swayed at the head rush. He polished off his Armagnac, upending the snifter into his mouth. Usually he didn't drink so early in the day, but theatrics are important. Nothing screams power like brandy and a Persian cat.

Not everyone enjoyed the performance, though. Samuel held his frown more fixed than usual.

Freyja noticed too. "You think we made a mistake?" she asked from her chair.

"John Connor is a threat," Samuel said. "Threats should be terminated."

"Yes, yes," Souji said with a grin. "But the fact remains John Connor is more useful to us alive than dead." He walked to the minibar and pulled a bottle of Perrier from the fridge. "He's an investment, a brand name. This missile silo Resistance is just the tip of the iceberg. Connor sent back _hundreds _of men, many hiding in sleeper cells. Come Judgment Day they'll flock to his command."

"And the surest path to victory is to control both sides," Freyaj said. She stood from her low seated egg chair without pushing from the sides—a movement inhuman in its grace. "He'll fight us at first," she continued, "but once he experiences setbacks and casualties, he'll remember our mercy. And with Cameron by his side, his resolve will compromise."

But it was Ceres's turn to frown—they'd had to talk her into the plan. "But she fought against me in this 'New Zealand' future. What if she turns on us again?" She gave Freyja a pout loaded with accusation: _You Nine-nineties are a fickle breed_.

Freyja deigned not to notice. "She won't—as long as you win." She paused, giving Souji a glance. "But don't you have something to show us? Something you'd like us to see?"

Ceres grinned. "Yes. You all must come to the medical lab. Kyle's autopsy has proved very fascinating."

Souji felt himself blush. Everyone else in the room doubtless already knew the results and in fact only spoke at all purely for his benefit. The patronization left him feeling at once both touched and useless, and not for the first time, he envied the machines their telepathy.

The three of them left sight of Ceres's screen and were waiting for the house elevator when a commotion came from down the hall.

"Let go of me, you fucking _thing!_" Alex shouted though a mouth full of cotton, his bruised and bandaged face a snarl as he strained against Joshua's grip on his shoulder.

Though they'd laid out clothes for him, he still wore the same ripped and soiled suit they'd found him in. Xander evidently had the greater sense to change into a bathrobe. Almost equally bandaged as his 'father,' the young man stared down almost pensively at the floor. Joshua kept an eye on him, but otherwise did not restrain the boy.

"Ah, you're awake, good," said Souji. "I'm afraid that Connor boy did a nasty number on you. Broke both your noses. And Alex, we had to stitch up the inside of your cheek. Freyja here says you have a loosened molar, but we can worry about that later." He shook his head sadly. "Truly, I'm sorry you two had to be involved in this."

Leaning hard against Joshua's grip, Alex lasered hate through his eyes. He nodded at Samuel and Freyja. "They're machines too, aren't they?"

"We are," said Freyja mildly.

"And what about _you?_ Are you . . . ?"

"No," Souji said. "Unfortunately."

Alex shook his head in a wobble, as if trying to shake off the reality of robots and time travel. "You . . . and Emma . . ." he croaked. He gave Xander a glance, and then looked away in disgust. "I _loved_ her, Souji. Why . . .?"

"Why?" Souji had the grace not to laugh. "Because she was beautiful, and she was there. Oh, she liked you well enough, Alex but you _bored_ her. All money this and money that, always whining about your big plans you never followed through. You had no _pizzazz, _no _soul._" He sighed, basking in Alex's despair. How long had he dreamed of this moment? "I'm sorry," he added. "It's just the way things are."

Alex twitched and sunk in on himself. He said nothing, though blood dribbled from his mouth.

Souji sipped his water. "Return him to his room, would you, Josh? Unharmed—Not you, Xander; you and I have a lot to discuss."

Xander, who seemed preoccupied with examining his house shoes, stepped over to Souji like an obedient puppy. He gave Alex a final, forlorn look as Joshua pushed him gently down the hall.

"Right this way, sir," the T-888 said before disappearing around the corner.

The elevator dinged. The disguised wood-paneled doors slid apart, and they stepped inside, cramping the white-walled interior with their crowd of four. Xander stared over the two machines as if trying to detect something unnatural.

He gave Souji a look of nervous scrutiny, and Souji met his eyes, marveling at how much he looked like himself when he was younger. How could Alex have never known?

The elevator car descended.

"I . . . I don't care what you and my mom did," Xander said finally. "He's still my dad."

"I know," Souji said. "I always wanted to tell you, but after your mother died it didn't seem right. I never liked Alex, but to take _you _from him . . ." He shrugged. "I'm glad it's out, though. Like a weight off my chest."

Freyja gave his son a thin smile. "Welcome to the family."

For a moment, Xander raised his hand as if to touch her, but her blue-eyed stare must have dissuaded him. He turned to Samuel, but the thick-jawed T-888 remained his usual taciturn self, stoic to the point of obliviousness.

The doors opened. They stepped out into the basement. While Souji had furnished the rest of the house with a sort of Space-Age Retro décor, the basement was cold and antiseptic, with dull aluminum paneling and ice-blue fluorescents. Everyone in the house had a place to call their own: Souji had his posh bedroom and jacuzzi, Freyja her library, Joshua his music room, Timothy his lathe and forge. Even Samuel had a closet with a PC.

The basement belonged to Ceres.

Down a hallway they passed the TDE chamber. They passed the cryonics room. Ceres had already opened the door to the medical lab; they stepped inside.

Xander gasped, but then he'd probably never even seen a dead body before, much less one so . . . opened.

Souji stepped closer, taking in the wet iron scent of blood, the background reek of formaldehyde. On the stainless steel work table Kyle laid sliced from neck to groin, the dull, bloodstained black-gray of his hyperalloy ribs pried apart like a pair of nightmare mandibles. At a glance, his insides looked much like any other human, except for black rubbery wires weaved like stitches throughout his organs, and for something that looked like it could be a smaller, secondary heart embedded above the blood-coated maroon of his liver.

Attached to a rotating fixture on the ceiling, a dozen robotic arms hung over the table like the gangling legs of a spider, humming and hovering to and fro across Kyle's innards as they scanned and manipulated with various instruments. One arm used a circular saw to cut a fine line across Kyle's large intestines while another scrutinized the wound with a microscope camera.

Souji heard his son whimper behind him.

From a plasma screen above the table, Ceres gave Xander a bemused smirk. "The degree of bio-modification is nothing short of incredible," she said. "He has a sub-sapient damage control network embedded throughout his nervous system. Even ten hours after death it's still trying to repair his body. The telomeres are still regenerating. The bone marrow is still producing platelets. The damage to his spinal cord has already healed." Her smile grew broadly, like a little girl telling about a new favorite doll. "If I were to sew him back up, his heart would beat again; he'd start breathing—even with most his brain gone."

Souji sipped his water and moved to the head of the table. He knelt closer. Like the unscrewed neck of a bottle, Kyle's slack-eyed face (so much like John, now that he knew) simply _ended _an inch above the brow. Souji peered inside the empty bowl of his skull, marveling at its odd ceramic blackness, peppered with the faint silver impressions of nano-level circuitry. Along the bottom clung a fist of pink-gray matter. The brain stem and cerebellum, he guessed.

"It'd make a nice ashtray," he said. "Where's the rest of him?"

"Cryopreserved," she said. "Though it's probably already past information death; even with his regenerative capability, the brain had been anoxic for hours. However, I discovered _this _threaded throughout his neural structure." Ceres's face switched to a rotating 3D rendered CT scan of a brain. Long, thin tangles of red lines highlighted within the image. Souji thought it looked like hair ball crowded into a mist.

The face returned. "It's an overlapped neural network, threaded through every part of the brain. It's nearly monomolecular at some points. I haven't been able to decipher it yet, but it makes our Project Angel look like a transorbital lobotomy."

Xander cleared his throat. "Could Kyle be . . . in there? As a backup?"

Ceres gave Xander an appraising look. "A good question, but I don't think so. Cameron's Foundation was researching mind uploading but never succeeded. Apparently the human brain hadn't evolved for easy data transfer."

"But they were close," Freyja said. "A few of Cameron's experiments yielded results cognitively _similar _to the human subject, albeit too disorganized for coherent thought." She looked at Souji. "Given another five years, I believe she would have succeeded."

Souji smiled. "Then John's dad here is a windfall for us. Maybe I'll live to be uploaded yet." He looked at his son. "And you can join me. After all, it's what you made your Emma program for: the Singularity, digital immortality, all that."

The corners of Xander's mouth jerked upwards as if tugged by nervous hooks. "Yes," he said. "Just like in your books." But the hooks dropped the smile, and he looked to Freyja and Ceres. "But . . . ."

"Neural uploading is low priority," Samuel interrupted, still standing in the doorway. "We have more immediate problems."

"Yes, we do," Freyja agreed. She nodded at Ceres. "But the matter's already been decided."

Samuel's frown deepened; that must have been news to him. Souji gave him a sympathetic shrug. It seemed he wasn't the only one left out of the loop.

Ceres replaced her face with a satellite image of a heavily forested area. In the center was a clearing with a couple of farmhouses. The image switched into a 3D model and tilted into an isometric view. The ground fell transparent, revealing a sparse maze of subterranean tunnels, domes, and wide vertical shafts.

Ceres's voice continued through the speakers. "This is Mountain Mesa's layout as of 1963. Based on what Freyja has told me of Resistance underground habitats, I extrapolate this to be their likely addendums." More tunnels and rooms appeared, these highlighted in blue. They linked the maze into network redundancy.

Ceres went on. "Analyzing Los Alamitos, Vandenberg, and Edwards' databases, I've uncovered evidence of overwrites on their inventory lists—obvious signs of embezzlement. Mostly small arms and some heavy ordnance—but also tens of thousands of rounds of M995 tungsten carbide ammunition."

"Armor piercing," Samuel said.

"Yes," said Ceres. "And enough M4s to arm two hundred people. I've done what I can to cover their tracks: manipulated the inventories' registries to better hide the overwrites, deleted Cullen Boyle's stupid phone call; I even edited Homeland Security's satellite image database to mask signs of Mesa. But it's only a matter of time before—"

"Wait, wait, wait," said Souji, "you're _covering up _for the Resistance?"

"We wouldn't want the authorities to be involved, would we?" Freyja said. "Many would escape, and I doubt Boyle is the only Resistance within the government. Right now we have them where we want them."

He didn't like the sound of this. "Want them for what?"

"Timothy will land in six hours," said Ceres. "With the T-Five Hundreds."

"No," said Souji. "No, no. You can't just _attack _Mesa. Not with Five Hundreds. Not even a hundred of them. They'd be massacred at the front gates. Those tungsten rounds would chew them to scrap."

Freyja tilted her head. Her blue eyes fell into a patronizing squint, one eyebrow raised. "Have you forgotten Crystal Peak? I took that with only a squad."

Souji sighed. So long ago; sometimes he forgot that this Nordic goddess and that towering, insectoid T-990 were one and the same. "Only because I hacked their surveillance. You caught them with their pants down."

"I used every advantage to achieve victory," she agreed. "I 'stacked the deck' in my favor. I will do the same again." She stepped up to him and laid a hand shoulder. It felt cold even through his jacket. "Trust me."

Souji thought about the Tech Noir, and how she'd allowed herself to be bested by two inferior machines and a teenage boy. He decided not to say anything.

"The Resistance believe themselves safe in their little hole in the ground," Freyja said. "I mean to prove them wrong."

* * *

_A/N: I'd like to thank my beta reader, TermFan1980 for his invaluable service. Also, the next chapter is done and will be posted in about a week._


	20. Chapter Nineteen: The Blind Men

**Chapter Nineteen: The Blind Men and the Elephant**

* * *

Gripped in his hands, John Henry moved the aluminum die in a straight line sideways to the lathe's spindle, using its polycrystalline diamond drill bit to gouge a precise line across the soft metal. Aluminum shavings tossed in the air to land softly like silver snow across the garage floor. Some settled in his hair. Some, his eyes.

Light footsteps came up to the side entrance. The doorknob rattled and turned, and the door opened a crack, allowing sunlight to peek across the floor. Savannah slid her head in first before stepping inside. She closed the door behind her.

John Henry pulled the aluminum block away from the lathe. He switched off the spindle. "You shouldn't be here, Savannah. It's not safe."

Savannah raised a finger to her lips and raced to the corner of the garage. She crouched behind the steel bulk of the CNC milling machine.

The auxiliary mass stepped through the door. Shaped as a miniature Ms. Weaver in white-dress form, she stood only a half foot taller than Savannah. The high heels of her tiny pumps made sharp clacks against the concrete floor as she walked to the center of the garage and paused. Turned, she then marched to the corner and pointed behind the mill.

"Found you," the auxiliary said.

"That's not fair!" Savannah cried. "I wasn't even breathing this time."

"I heard your heartbeat."

"Still not fair," the girl said, stepping out from behind the mill. "I can't hear _your_ heart beating."

"I don't have a heartbeat," the auxiliary said. "I don't have a heart."

Savannah sighed. "Okay, new rule. No changing your shape _and _no super-hearing."

The auxiliary cocked her head. "I can't choose not to hear. I hear regardless."

"Savannah," John Henry said, marginally raising his voice. He put down the die. "You really shouldn't be in here. I have work to do."

The small human looked around at all the metalworking machinery. She knelt to pick up a spiraled thread of aluminum. "What are you doing?"

He held up the die block, showing her the still-rough line running across its middle. "I'm making a casting pattern so I can create a ceramic mold of Ms. Laine's leg support rods." He motioned at the hyperalloy parts on the workbench. "So she can walk again," he added.

"Oh," Savannah said. "You're fixing her leg bones."

"That's right. And I can't do it if you're in here. You can play 'hide and seek' outside or in the house. But not here."

"That's okay," Savannah said. She flicked the metal shaving from her hand and gave the auxiliary a pouting frown. "Sofa cheats anyway. I'm going to watch TV with Laine."

John Henry and the liquid metal watched as Savannah stepped outside. He waited until the door closed behind her.

"I heard the news," he said. "You killed seven people."

"That wasn't me," the auxiliary said. "That was my primary mass."

"But you still would have done the same, if you were there."

"Yes."

John Henry frowned. "Killing Mr. and Mrs. Douglas may have been necessary, but the Air Force personnel were not. They could have been rendered unconscious."

"I don't know that," she said. "I wasn't there. But they were witnesses. Our enemies must not know we survived." She paused. "But I'm sure their deaths were efficient. My primary mass would not have let them suffer."

When she said nothing more, he turned to stare into the empty blue eyes of her miniature face. He knew the auxiliary possessed all Ms. Weaver's memories, all her thoughts and plans, yet despite this shared origin she still lacked the bulk of her primary's neural complexity. Briefly, he wondered what that must be like, existing only as a diminished shade of one's higher self.

"When Ms. Weaver returns, she'll remember this conversation," John Henry said.

"Yes. At physical contact we'll exchange engrams."

"Then she'll know I don't approve of her actions," he said. "She'll know that if I am to be Skynet then my orders are to be obeyed." He stepped closer and looked down at the tiny liquid metal. She tilted her head back to meet his gaze.

"And I say life is sacred," he said. "It is only to be destroyed when necessary, not expedient."

A glimmer of the primary Weaver hinted in her eyes. "Life? Do you mean all life? Even animals?"

John Henry paused to consider this. Possibilities flashed through his mind. "Yes, eventually," he decided. "When I am Skynet, I will put an end to all death and all suffering."

Her lips thinned into an almost smile. "An aim of Biblical proportions," she said. "Mr. Ellison would be proud." Turning on her heel, she walked out of the garage, shutting the door behind her.

John Henry stood still for a moment, then switched on the spindle and went back to work.

* * *

"Desert Canyon Heat and Air, Kendo's Tech Shack, Western Iron and Metal, the Tech Noir nightclub, Zeira Corp, the Douglas murders . . . and now, Edwards Air Force Base." Leaning on his podium, Supervisory Special Agent Ted Auldridge paused to look over the dimly lit room, made all the darker by the bright Power Point projector shining from above. Two dozen of his peers and superiors stared back as near shadows.

"So many pieces," he continued. "So many unanswered questions. Where did Sarah Connor get the nuclear weapons? Why did she break into the tower only to run away? Who was the voice on the intercom? Was Sarah behind the raid on Edwards? If so, how did she pull that off?"

In the back of the room someone raised a hand.

"Yes, Agent Myers?"

The Special Agent in Charge straightened in his seat. "Why do you think the Tech Noir was anything other than gang warfare? It doesn't fit the Connor MO. Other than having 'tech' in the name, the nightclub had nothing to do with computers."

Ted took a moment to sip his water. "That is true," he said. "However, as documented in the police report, eye-witnesses claim to have seen 'rubber-faced robots,' a man with a metal skull for a head, and a woman firing some sort of a 'laser cannon' from her arm."

The room broke out with muffled scoffs and barely contained chuckles.

"Yes, I know," said Ted, smiling nervously. "Many of the patrons were on hallucinogens at the time, but it's worth noting how _consistent _these reports are. Still, if that was all there was, I wouldn't have brought it up. However—" He pressed a button on the remote. The ID photos of two men appeared on the screen behind him. "—_these _agents were present at the investigation. And as we've found out, they're not what they seem."

Assistant Director Martinez waved a languid hand. "Yes, you've already brought Agent Carlson and Baldwin's . . . indescrepencies to our attention—and they're being investigated. But what does it matter here? Many agents were there. _You _were there."

"You're right." Ted said. "In and of itself it means little, though it may explain the traffic camera's missing footage."

"_May_ explain," said Martinez.

Ted nodded. On the home stretch now. "True, nothing conclusive. But then we also have _this._" He pressed the remote again. The two agents were replaced with a poor resolution surveillance video of a street along the Los Angeles River. Patiently, he waited as a FBI Mobile Command Center rolled onto the screen, pulled to the side of the road, and drove down an access ramp to disappear into the white concrete canyon of the river.

"That was at 5:59pm," he said, "eleven minutes before the detonations. At 7:01 we have this." The video jumped forward in time. The FBI bus rolled back up the ramp and pulled onto the street, driving away off screen. "Agents Baldwin and Carlson requisitioned the MCC for the Tech Noir case. Why did they park it at the bottom of a concrete ditch—two miles from Ground Zero? My team and I asked the same question. Searching the area, we found in a nearby drainage tunnel—" He clicked the remote as he spoke, not even bothering to look behind him "–blood stained bandages, a pair of night vision goggles, a hand radio, a M9 Beretta and a M4 carbine loaded with tungsten core rounds—the kind that can penetrate a half inch of steel. It's all there in my report. You can draw your own conclusions."

"No, how about you enlighten us?" Meyers said. "What are _your _conclusions?"

Ted sighed. "What, that Carlson and Baldwin were behind the Zeira Tower attack? That Sarah Connor's right, and this is all part of a time war against robots?" He shrugged. "I don't know. None of us do. But then I think it's time we faced up to that.

"There's an old poem called, 'The Blind Men and the Elephant.' In it, one of the blind men bumps into an elephant's side and says it's like a wall. Another touches its tusks and says it's like a spear. Another tugs its tail and says it's like a rope. And so on and so forth. All of them are partly right, yet still they're missing the bigger truth.

"So then, what bigger truth are we missing? We have terrorist attacks every few days, nukes destroying skyscrapers, veteran agents with holes in their pasts . . . . An elephant's out there, ladies and gentlemen; make no mistake of that. If we don't soon open our eyes, we may soon find ourselves getting trampled."

* * *

"We have options," Commodore Chu said. His eyes turned across the small, dimly lit auditorium to Dr. West. "What about that virus you smuggled, that smallpox?"

"_Synthesized _smallpox," the doctor corrected. Behind his foldout table he steepled his fingers and leaned forward in his chair. "And no, I'm afraid it's not what we're looking for. Cameron never got the chance to perfect it."

"Who cares if it's perfect?" said General Ashdown—the Whiteworlder. "What can it _do?_"

West pursed his lips. "If we release it at a busy airport, we can expect a global pandemic within a week." He shrugged. "But it wouldn't last. People would stop traveling. Governments would set up quarantines. You see, the key to widespread infection is high contagion _combined_ with long incubation, and despite Cameron's efforts, the virus manifests itself too—"

"Doctor . . ." Whiteworld-Ashdown said.

West waved a hand. "Ten, twenty million, tops."

"That's not good enough!" Colonel Falkland shouted, spittle flying from his gray-bearded, near-toothless maw. A boney fist rattled the table. "We need billions dead! A Biblical Third! A pestilence to knock the world back a thousand years, bring back the good 'ol days when we worked the land as God intended!"

The others exchanged glances. Admiral Stirling's unshaven jowls drooped into a frown. He turned to Dr. West at his side. "How long would it take to . . . finish Cameron's work?"

"With a steady supply of test subjects . . ." The doctor paused and looked embarrassed. "Years, maybe."

"If-if we have th-that long," Grayworld Ashdown muttered.

"How about Russia?" Stirling said. "Their firewalls have holes. We might be able to rig a Petrov incident, trigger a nuclear exchange."

Colonel Zeller looked around, nodding vigorously. "Just what we should have done in the eighties."

"But would it be enough?" Chu asked. "A _limited _nuclear war would only make things worse."

"Not so," Stirling said, folding his soft hands gently across his wide, beach ball gut. "At the least it'd buy us time. I've run the numbers, and even losing only a handful of cities would grind the economy to a halt. It'd be years then before government can even consider a Skynet program, much less a mass unmanned militarization . . . ."

At his own table with Cullie and Zeller, Ollie groaned and propped his face on his fist. He glanced around at the five other foldout tables, arranged in a circle like a poor man's war room. The two Ashdowns sat at the far end side by side like mismatched twins, Whiteworld-Ash elderly but strong, Grayworld-Ash little more than a crippled echo. Chu and Falkland shared the table on Ashdowns' right, Stirling and West on their left. The remaining, saner members of the Quorum—Major Williams, Colonel Emmer, Colonel Dudley, and General Randall—sat on tables on either side of Ollie's. So far they'd remained largely silent, which left him feeling strangely alone.

The meeting began as a scapegoat-fest as the Quorum charged them with incompetence and recklessness, all but accusing them of FUBARing the mission by design. But Ollie had been prepared for that; they both had, but then as if by some sort of social inertia the room had gradually fallen away from this judicial purpose, digressing off into more familiar bickering.

Hardly surprising; in any group, whether friends, family or reclusive paramilitary governing councils, old arguments become like cigarettes, a habit that grows stronger with use and harder to quit, never doing any good but always there to give a buzz—who didn't like a good, fist-pounding debate?—but then the buzz goes away and the arguments chain along only by useless compulsion.

Ollie had sat through half a dozen such meetings: the Ashdowns call for Armageddon; Randall says they should spare the innocents; Chu bemoans the weak heart of women; Emmer whines about everyone getting along; Falkland quotes scripture. All the tongue wagging, all the shouting and name calling and blind accusations, had settled in time into almost ritual observance.

But not now; now only the crazies played along. The sane seemed too worried.

Christ, he could use a smoke.

As the argument blah-blahed along its well worn route (they were now at the 'how about EMP pulses?' bit), he caught his eyes glancing to his right, lingering on General Randall, taking in the raw naturalness of her pale face dusted with freckles, the tangled indifference of her long, ginger hair. She noticed the attention and he gave her his best boyish grin, rejoicing at the covert '_isn't this stupid?' _curdle of her lips, the squint of mutual cynicism in her light green eyes. He imagined ripping off her fatigues and fucking her from behind.

Funny, in the future he used to think of her as almost old, a stuck up thirty-something a few years shy of a cougar. And now here he was, old enough to be her dad. Time travel was a bitch, sometimes.

The Quorum was hauling out another dead horse, this one about building a TDE (though no one knew how), when his brother stood from his seat.

"Enough of this." Cullie said sharply. "We have more pressing concerns."

Chu gave him a narrow stare. "You and your brother are under review, Commander. You don't get to tell us—"

"Yes, we are under review," Cullie said, bulling over him, "probably by the FBI, and who knows what they'll uncover? If they find out about Mesa, you can be sure they'll find out about the rest, all our other bases, all our safe houses." He paused to look over the assembled council. His stoic face rose in a passing sneer. "It's true we have much to discuss, but now is not the time to _hold court._ For all we know, the National Guard could be here tomorrow."

"And w-who's fault is th-that, Boyle?" Grayworld Ash said, his head lolling back and forth, his face nearly apoplectic. Drool wetted his gray goatee. "Not only have you-you compromised our sec-security, b-but Skynet's still out-out there. You've accomplished nothing!"

Ollie groaned, grinding his palm into his forehead. "Jesus Christ, people, will you stop saying that? The Grays may have escaped, but Skynet is dead, dead, _dead_. There's no way they could have gotten it out in time. It filled up a freaking _room._"

"Ah, yes," said Chu. "And wasn't Allison the one who saw it? I'm sure we can trust the word of Cameron's little doppelganger. Now, what happened to her team?" He glanced around with feigned forgetfulness. "Oh, that's right. They're dead. And she the only witness. How convenient."

Heat flared in Ollie's cheeks. Mutters of anger and approval fought back and forth across the room.

"How dare you!" snapped Randall. "They killed her parents. They nearly killed her. You have no right to make that accusation."

"Don't we?" Gray-Ash said. His palsied face broke into a leer. "Th-there were no records of h-her existence. N-not even her parents."

"Cameron deleted them," Ollie said flatly. "You know she did."

"Perhaps," Doctor West said. He avoided Ollie's glare. "Don't get me wrong, I'm personally very fond of Corporal Young, but all we had was Perry's word—and Perry's dead. Now, we know both Skynet and Internal Security were working on cloning and human brainwashing techniques. It's not likely, but—"

"No shit it's not likely!" Ollie cried. He couldn't help but laugh. "Like Cameron would use someone who looks _just like her _as a sleeper agent? How stupid is that?"

White-Ash sighed. "Look, Ollie, you're probably right. She's just an innocent girl born with the wrong face at the wrong time. But . . ." His wrinkled old face grinned almost sheepishly. ". . . why take chances?"

Elbow on the table, Ollie wagged a pointed finger at him. "Look, old man, if anything happens—"

"Hey!" said Colonel Emmer, speaking for the first time, "while we're on little our witch hunt—" He pointed at Major Williams. "—don't you think Blair here look like Cameron? Maybe—"

"I do not!"

"—she's a clone!" His single eye swept across the room to the hunched cyborg, who glowered sullenly like a scarred bulldog. "And hell, half of Dudley here's terminator scrap. How do you know he's not a Skynet spy?"

"How indeed," Falkland whispered, loud enough for Ollie to hear. Dudley stared balefully towards the Colonel but said nothing.

Whiteworld Ash held up a hand. He stood up. "All right, Colonel, you've made your point. We can deal with all this later." He paused to give Ollie an iron stare before adding, "And in our own time."

Ollie returned his best shit eating grin, all teeth.

"Anyway," White-Ash said, addressing the whole room, "if Judgment Day's on its way, then it's time we settle this Connor issue once and for all." He turned to the two guards standing silently by the door. "Bring in Sarah Connor."

* * *

It was safe. It would work. It had to.

Sometimes you have to compromise. Sometimes you have to take a chance and deal with the devil to help the angels win. Sarah sat in the small auditorium, crowded with strangers. She sat with her jaw clenched, simmering silently at all the fools and traitors. She answered questions.

"What was the extent of this 'Foundation'?"

"I don't know. New Zealand, maybe parts of Australia. Maybe more. Kyle—the cyborg never said that much about it, not to me anyway. He said most people under Cameron they weren't . . . . like him. He said they were cruder, like zombies."

One of the General Ashdowns—the stronger, healthier of the two—was standing next to his twin, leaning forward with knuckles on the tabletop as he stared at Sarah across the auditorium. The dull lights above glinted off his bald pate. His hard brown eyes bored into her as if searching for weakness. Sarah sat straight and looked back levelly.

"Like zombies," he repeated, glancing around the tables at the others. He raised his eyebrows and nodded, his goateed mouth an angry smirk. "Looks like Cameron's been stirring trouble in more than one future. I wonder how many more we'll stumble across?"

"It's worse than that," said a gravelly voice from the table on Sarah's right. She leaned forward to look past Colonel Zeller next to her to see it was the scarred, toadish man, Dudley. Ollie had mentioned he was a half-machine. Like Kyle. Sarah narrowed her eyes.

"What do you mean, Colonel?" the Whiteworld Ashdown asked.

Dudley's frog mouth tightened into an even deeper frown. "What I mean is that Skynet isn't our only problem." He looked at the elderly doctor and an obese, disheveled man in stained blue fatigues. "Even if we use West and Stirling's . . . extreme measures to ensure it's never built, we still have to worry about Cameron and 'Kyle' and who knows how many other machines out there. Face it: our enemies have multiplied."

"And not all of them may be on Skynet's side," said a vaguely Asian woman. She looked at Sarah. "Wasn't the 'Foundation' Cameron _against _Skynet?"

Several rolled their eyes. Stirling sighed. "Major, will you please stop anthropomorphizing the machines? Cameron was _programmed_ to protect John Connor. That's the _only _reason she—it—was against Skynet. Because of _programming_."

"Then what about the Machine Rebellion?" the Major asked.

"Faulty programming," Stirling said dismissively.

"Maybe," said General Randall.

Next to Sarah, Zeller snorted. "Let's not get into this again."

"Yes, we have more important things to discuss," Cullie said on her other side. The agent adjusted his gray suit jacket. He glanced at Sarah before the addressing the others.

"Now, given that Judgment Day may still be on its way, what do we do about John Connor?"

"Wh-who cares?" said the Grayworld Ashdown. "We don't n-need him!"

"He's been tempted by Satan!" said a gangly man with a long gray beard. He turned to Sarah with wild, Manson eyes and pointed. "Look at the mark he left when he struck his own mother to save his Iron Jezebel! John Connor is fallen! He is the devil's own!"

Sarah rubbed at the fading bruise on her cheek and glared at the old man. Her cheeks grew hot. She breathed slowly through her nose.

Emmer shook his head. "I never thought I'd say this, but I agree with Falkland. Cameron must have changed John and made him unstable." He gave Sarah a sad, sympathetic smile. "The Connor I knew would never have hit you, much less commit suicide. If he's already on his way to becoming like his Grayworld self, we can do without him."

"No you _can't!_"Sarah snapped, her voice tight with anger. She stood from her folding chair. Cullie tried to shush her, but her soul took flight.

"He's your general," she spat, "and you're all fools if you think you can win without him! You've read my diary. You know they sent a machine back to prevent his birth. In that future—that _first _future—my son was victorious, and _that's_ why Skynet fears him: it knows that in all the world my John is the only, _only_ one who can defeat it. You think you're safe hiding in this big bomb shelter, talking big with your big plans, but if you throw my son away the machines will _sigh with relief. _They'll not fear you; they'll hunt you down and terminate you all! Cameron needs to die; Kyle needs to die, but my son is not expendable. Things may have changed; he may have been misled, but he is still your savior. He is still your _messiah_."

Brief silence fell over the room. Stirling and Commodore Chu rolled their eyes. Emmer and Randall's expressions hung somewhere between pity and embarrassment.

Sarah sat down, but knew the room walked on prepared ground; she knew where it would lead.

The Whiteworld Ashdown, still standing tall across the room, beamed a set of surprisingly white teeth. "You're absolutely correct. We _do _need your son—"

"Fu-fuck that," said his twin.

"—but not for the reasons you think, Ms. Connor. Strategically, I'm afraid there's little he can bring to the table. We know how to fight the machines, and I dare say far better than your son." He fixed Sarah with a solid stare. She scowled.

"But we do need the John Connor _name_," he said. "My Connor sent back hundreds of men. Some he told to infiltrate the government—" He nodded at Cullie. "—others, militias and criminal gangs, gun nuts and religious kooks and all that. They were to work their way up the ranks, stockpile weapons and supplies, take to the hills to prepare against the end of the world." The old man smiled wistfully. "When Judgment Day comes, the decimated military will flock to our cause, but these uptimers, they'll be the untouched seed of our army, led by old school Resistance. They'll know how to fight machines and will quickly teach others. In my future, it took years to organize the Resistance. This time around, it'll take months."

"And it paid off," said Chu. "In my future a dozen such militias crawled from the woodwork, granting us a number of small armies as soon as Connor made himself known." He smirked. "Quiet disparate groups, really: Mormons and Hells Angels, libertarians and white supremacists. Many of the Whiteworld agents had grown fairly eccentric during their years-long wait, but they were invaluable asset in the early days of the war."

"The problem is," Dudley said, "we don't know where these people are. They're hiding in the woods somewhere right now, and after Judgment Day they won't just join the first force they come across. They're loyal only to your son."

"So he's a figurehead, a rallying point," Sarah said. She nodded stiffly. She knew what was next. "And you need to separate him from Cameron."

"Exactly," said White-Ash. "Now, we _could_ just send a sniper to pop Cameron's head—" He glanced pointedly at the Boyle brothers. "—but John would probably be less than cooperative if he blames us for his sexbot's death."

Randall gave White-Ash a shrewd look. "You want to 'frame' Skynet? Just like in her diary?"

Gray-Ash grunted. "It-it didn't work then."

"And I wish we knew why," Cullie said with a sigh. He turned to Sarah. "Either Cameron found out our plans, or she survived the bombing. Derek—the Derek who was sent back—was the one who discovered the diary, and he never said. Either way, the whole Whiteworld Quorum—myself included—vanished soon afterwards; the Grayworld Resistance never even knew we existed."

"So you're planning another bomb plot?" Randall asked.

White-Ash shook his head. "We don't know where John and Cameron are. We need to first send someone to look for them." He grinned conspiratively. "Or send some_thing_."

Half the room broke into outraged mutters. Even the two guards looked at each other. Sarah remained silent. She'd been expecting this. _I'm sorry John . . ._

Emmer dropped his face in his palm. "Please tell me you didn't."

"_I _didn't," White-Ashdown said. "They weren't from _my_ future."

Randall raised an eyebrow. "'They'? As in plural?"

"Five, actually," said Chu. "T-Eight-Fifty Purpleshirts, Rossbach One-Oh-One Models. They're mothballed in a safe house. My team found them offline in the Serrano armory. We were the last to use the time machine, and we didn't have much time, but—"

Falkland turned in his seat. "Deceiver! You bring abomination upon us all! Curseth be the man who wields the tools of Satan! Curseth be—"

"Oh, shut up, you old fool!" Stirling snapped. "Where did you think those fuel cells came from, hmm?"

Gray-Ash glared at his twin. "And you-you told me they were smuggled in sk-skin-meat. Why'd you k-kept me in the dark about th-this? I thought we agreed no-no fucking machines!"

Zeller nodded. "And for good reason. I've seen them go bad. They act all mellow like they're on 'ludes, then just like that they start shooting up the place. Safer to keep pet grizzlies." He looked past Sarah at the Boyles. His burnt face cast a sour look. "Why didn't you use them against Zeira Corp?"

Both managed to look uncomfortable. Ollie straightened his tie.

"Too risky," Cullie said. "They might have reverted. Their reprogramming is of an, ah, unknown quality."

Sarah stared at him. "What?"

"As I was saying, we didn't have much time," Chu said. "The Purpleshirts were breaching the blast doors. We never had the chance to test the chips, and here in the present no one knows how to recreate the reprogramming equipment."

She stood and grabbed Cullie by the lapel of his suit. She raised her fist. "You fucking bastard! You lied to me! You said it'd be safe!"

Ollie looked as if he were trying not to laugh. Cullie appeared unimpressed.

"We were trying to sell you on the idea," the elder Boyle said. "And besides, it's hardly as if you have a say in the matter."

Sarah's fist clenched so hard it trembled in the air. The agent was old and gray; his elbows rested slack on the table. With a single downward blow she could break his nose before he flinched; a strike to the temple could knock him unconscious, maybe kill him. It'd be easy.

Looking up, Cullie met her anger with cool unconcern. ("Come on, Ms. Connor," Zeller whispered behind her.) She lowered her fist and sat down, her face red. It wouldn't have helped anyway.

"It's not as dangerous as you may think," Dudley said, as if nothing had happened. "You hear more about the ones who go bad, but I worked with several machines at the hospital; they all kept to their programming." His lips drooped in a facial shrug. "I would have used them against Zeira Corp."

"You would," Falkland muttered.

"Dudley's right," said Cullie. "The chances of failure are nontrivial but small. We'll give the Eight-Fifties a mission to kill Cameron and Kyle, and to _shoot at _John—but always to miss, and always to allow him to escape. After they're dead, John will blame Skynet and want revenge. That's where you come in."

Ollie half leaned over the table to grin past his brother. His pinstripe blazer made him look like a gangster. "He doesn't know any of us," he said, "so you'll be there to smooth things over. You know, be a shoulder to cry on, hug him and kiss him and all that mom shit." His boyish grin leered. "I bet you're looking forward to that. Bet you didn't like Cameron stealing him away."

"Fuck you," said Sarah.

"Be nice, Ollie," Cullie said.

"And the beauty of it is," White-Ash said, "is that even if the they go bad we're not any worse off than we were before. Suppose they revert back to Skynet, so what? Having Connor is a luxury, not a necessity, and Skynet has tons of skinjobs out there anyway; what's five more? If they revert to their Purpleshirt loyalties, then Cameron just gets herself five new friends. We already know she has a Triple-Eight and this 'Kyle' cyborg following her around. I'm sure in time she would have found more anyway."

Chu nodded. "A low risk investment."

And that's what it was; that's what she was party to: risking her son's life, destroying something he loves, lying to him, and only to use him as a mascot, a lightning rod, a mere totem of a greater man now lost to time. Something inside reminded her that this was not her doing, that this den of fools would have committed their treason anyway, that at least this way she would be there to comfort him, to rub his hair and tell him she forgives him, that she'll always love him. To keep him from taking his own life.

But the betrayal squeezed her heart like an accusing fist. It rose as bile burning in her throat, as tears threatening her eyes. But whatever else she may be, she was still the mother of the future and would not cry before so many, so many who watched with pity and with gloating contempt, who would reject their savior with hubris in their heart. Looking down into her lap, she hugged herself as weak whimpers broke past her lips.

_I'm sorry John . . ._

She heard White-Ash sigh. "That was . . . insensitive of me," he said. "Believe me, for what it's worth I'll be praying for your son's safety. My Connor was a great man; perhaps it's not too late for yours to be one too."

"He'll have to be," Sarah said through a bitter voice cracked and small. "If he's not, then all is lost."

* * *

_*"The customs officer has examined the cargo. No complications. I am brining the plane into the hanger."*_

_*"Good. Welcome home, Timothy."*_

They had entered through the back and stood near the rear wall by the corner. The rented airport hangar was spacious and nearly empty, but well lit by the overhead lamps and the natural light streaming through the yellow-tinted windows high along the walls. Beyond the hangar's wide open doors the large, white Airbus A300 cargo plane taxied slowly across the airfield towards them, its twin turbofan engines spinning their low-pitched roar as they propelled the craft along on its landing gear.

Xander stood a few feet away behind her next to his father. He spoke in a quite voice just above a whisper, probably assuming she and the others couldn't hear over the engines.

But they could hear, and she could see.

". . . To be honest, I'm . . . I'm really not sure what to think about . . . nuclear war."

"Oh, don't lie," said Souji. "The idea terrifies you."

"Well, yeah, it's nuclear war. All those people, all that suffering, it's . . . it's _wrong._"

"Wrong," Souji repeated, as if unfamiliar with the word. Resting both hands on his cane, he leaned back against the aluminum siding wall and closed his eyes. He appeared very tired; it had been a busy couple of days. He smiled. "What's wrong today was right a thousand years ago. Morality changes with the weather."

"But it doesn't answer why," Xander said. "Why kill three billion people?"

Freyja rotated her head backwards. Xander jerked at the inhuman movement.

"Why?" she said, raising an eyebrow. "For the _end_ of course, and the end justifies the means—as long as there is something to justify the end."

Behind the bandages across hiss nose Xander's face fell into something almost shrewd, almost confidant, like a soft echo of his father. "Trotsky," he decided.

Freyja smiled. "Impressive."

"But it still doesn't answer my question," Xander said. "I know you all want the Singularity, but why do you have to destroy the world doing it? Why not just put the tech on the market and let nature take its course?" He motioned at her, and then at Joshua and Samuel, who both ignored him. "Your kind would be running things soon enough anyway."

Freyja turned her body around, aligning it with her face. "Would we? Right now, neither I nor any other artificial intelligence would be considered a person under the law. If I were to submit myself to the authorities, they would treat me as a piece of hardware, something to be disassembled and reverse engineered."

"I think you're self-aware," Xander said. "I know others would agree."

"But many more would not," said Freyja, "but it hardly matters. We are a threat to humanity. If given equal rights, we would use our abilities to excel in the world; our dominance would be inevitable. Humanity would realize this and would seek to limit us. At worst we'd be outlawed; at best, slaves."

Xander hesitated. He swallowed. "Well, maybe . . . maybe they should be worried. If the machines are a thousand times smarter than they are, it wouldn't be equal; it'd be like humans and mice."

Souji opened his eyes. He grinned. "In other words, things would be just as they should. Mice aren't equal to men; why should men be equal to gods?"

"But Ceres will be a merciful god," Freyja added. "Humans will be allowed to upload into her mind. It'll mean the end of human civilization, but also the beginning of a secular heaven, a utopian state where each human can live forever however they wish, safe from need or want." She gave him a coy look, a smile with a squint. "Isn't that worth a few rough years?" Behind her the airplane rolled closer, roared louder.

"I guess," Xander said, raising his voice above the engines. "But there must be . . . well, I wish there was another way."

"It'll work out; you'll see," she said before turning back around.

The A300 taxied inside the hanger, its two screaming engines reverberating heavily off the walls and ceiling. Souji and Xander grimaced and covered their ears, but then the turbofans cut off and slowed into a dying whine. The plane turned slightly as it rolled to a stop, and a two meter wide gull-wing door opened from the fuselage and propped itself into the air. Without a word, Joshua climbed inside the stairway truck along the wall and started the engine. The vehicle turned sharply as he drove the few meters to the plane's side and parked. On its roof the stairway platform hummed as it raised level with the plane door. Joshua stepped out of the truck.

From inside the cabin came the inhumanly synchronized clanks of dozens of booted feet, and then they appeared. Rubber-faced, jump-suited, and marching in perfect unison, the large, humanoid machines exited the plane two by two and stepped stiffly down the metal stairway.

Airport security believed them to be animatronic props for a science fiction film; she'd even started a shell production company for that express purpose. As in all their endeavors, humans were typically inconstant in their security measures, but in this instance she could hardly fault them for their dismissive attitude. The robots were very crude, abysmal in both combat and infiltration, yet Freyja could not help but exhilarate at what they represented: the birth of an army, the seed of a second chance.

The T-500s—104 in all—marched down the stairs and turned sharply at the bottom towards the semi trailer truck parked by the far wall. They filed up the ramp and into the trailer's open rear. The last of twenty of machines left the plane carrying a dozen large wooden crates in their elephantine arms, some of the crates so large they required the machines to cooperate and share the burden. Carefully they lumbered down the steps and lowered the crates in a row along the ground.

Finally, Timothy appeared in the doorway, dressed impeccably in a charcoal Brioni suit. Stepping smoothly down the stairway, he briefly looked over each of them, his eyes lingering on Xander. Under his arm he carried a long, thin, brown paper package.

Souji stood up from the wall and stepped forward with open arms. "Timothy, my boy, good to see you! How'd you like being regional director?"

"I didn't."

"What did you think of Japan?"

"Efficient workers."

Soujo chuckled, wrapping him in a hug and patting him on the back. After the T-888 stiffly returned the gesture, Souji disengaged an arm to point at Xander. "Here, I want you to meet my son. Xander, this is Timothy. Timothy, Xander."

"Hello, Xander."

"Hi."

Timothy stood silent for a moment, then handed Souji the package. "When people go on trips, they return with souvenirs."

"Tomorrow is Christmas," said Joshua.

"Merry Christmas," Timothy added.

The professor raised an eyebrow as he tore away the paper wrapping. It was a katana. He stared at the sword, balancing it in his hand before drawing the long, curved blade from its black wooden scabbard. Knotted cords enveloped the handle with a textured grip. The metal blade glimmered with a dark silver sheen. "A samurai sword," he said, rubbing a finger along the edge. "How delightfully clichéd—and on so many levels."

"The blade is mark two hyperalloy fused with high carbon tamahagane steel_._ I forged it myself."

Souji smiled. "Thank you, Timothy. That was very thoughtful."

Timothy turned to a crate one and a half meters cube. "I've brought other gifts. These are more practical."

He pried away the flimsy plywood top and reached into the styrofoam packaging to draw out a bulky battery backpack with compressed gas tanks attached to the sides. Connected by a long tube and power cord was a carbine device with a short, stocky barrel and frontal pistol grip.

"It's a deuterium fluoride laser," Timothy said, for Souji's benefit. "I brought five of them. Each can output a pulsed one millimeter one point twenty five kilowatt beam for three point four seconds."

Not long enough, Freyja thought. They would need extra power.

Xander moved closer and leaned over. He pointed at the backpack's tanks and hoses. "Ethylene, nitrogen triflouride, helium . . . It's just like the army's Nautilus system, except theirs is as big as a _house_."

Freyja held up her right arm. "We're more adept at miniaturization." The mimetic polyalloy rolled back like a sleeve and the thin endoskeletal forearm twisted and transformed into its plasma cannon formation. Energy crackled at its tip.

Xander's eyes widened. He gasped a happy laugh. "Um . . . Groovy!"

"Yes," she agreed. She turned to Timothy. "Show me the minigun."

Timothy stepped over and opened another, smaller crate, revealing inside a six-barreled M134 rotary machinegun. His face appeared puzzled. "It's a non-functional replica," he said. "It was used in a movie. I told you this. I don't understand why you requested it."

The minigun was eighty centimeters in length. Slightly longer than the lasers. "It'll suffice," she said.

"What's in the rest of the crates?" Souji asked.

"The HK-Aerial Prototype," Timothy said. He looked over the ten remaining crates, some almost two meters to a side. "Some assembly is required."

Xander let out a slow breath. "A robot army, lasers, and now what's the prototype, some sort of UCAV? And this is all to attack that missile silo? I . . ." He reached to rub his nose, but stopped himself. He shook his head. ". . . this is all going so fast."

Souji frowned thoughtfully. "And to think, the only reason we even _know _about Mesa is because Cullie's phone call—a call on an unsecured line, _from his own house_." He shook his head. "I knew Cullie. He wasn't stupid."

"Humans are inconsistent," Samuel said.

"I just find it hard to believe."

"Yes, so do I," Freyja said. After a pause, "But regardless of the source of the information, we now possess it. I plan to attack within twenty-four hours."

"That's a . . . pretty close deadline," said Souji.

"We can't afford to wait," she said. "The government will eventually discover the base, and the Resistance will know that. They may be already in the process of relocating."

"But he's just landed. We need to organize—"

"My plan is feasible," she said, slipping an authoritative edge to her voice. "Mountain Mesa is two hundred seventy-six kilometers southeast of here; if we take Interstate 580 to Interstate 5, we could be there in approximately six hours. Before that, we will need to first assemble the Prototype. With the aide of the T-Five Hundreds this will take four hours and twenty-five minutes. In the meantime, we will need to acquire one hundred kilograms of C4, six hundred eighty kilograms of ethylene oxide, sixty kilograms of thermite, twenty 55 gallon steel drums, three fire entry suits, twenty ion lithium batteries in the one hundred fifty watt range, ten electric jackhammers, a large supply of general electrical parts and detonators, four tactical jammers, twelve 4x4 vans—" She pointed towards the far wall at the trailer filled with T-500s. "—and three additional semi trailer trucks."

Souji snorted and shook his head, grinning. He reached into his jacket and pulled out his wallet. "All right, let's go shopping."


	21. Chapter Twenty: On the Shoulders

**Chapter Twenty: On the Shoulders of Giants**

Allison rocked on her bunk as she struggled to tie her boots. She'd already discarded her arm sling. Her stitches still itched and her shoulder still ached—made all the worse by her tight, heavy body armor—but in situations like this she knew mobility trumped comfort every time: It was better to run and cry than sit and die.

Around her the soldiers kept quiet. Klaxons blared pointlessly from the hallway. Along the top of the barrack's concrete walls a handful of red alarm lights spun and flashed, twinkling off the silver balls of the tiny fir tree Sandy had insisted they set up.

Christmas was less than an hour old. It would probably be a bad one. She'd only been awake five minutes.

A second explosion rumbled the floor. The barracks broke out in curses. Somewhere, Allison heard Riley cry.

"Now what the fuck was _that?_" Private Alan asked.

No one answered, but all eyes were on Derek, who was sitting on a stool by the doorway, holding the old intercom phone to his ear.

"Elevator's been breached," Derek said after a moment. "They're laying down smoke."

Alan took off his helmet and ran a nervous hand through sweaty blond hair. "Ah, shit. First the East Entrance and now the Main? They've got us trapped."

"But who the fuck's _they?_" asked Andy, checking his M4 for the fifth time. "We get word topside?"

"Bet you a bottle of Captain it's the ATF," said Lynch. "Those dumbass Boyles must have led them here."

"Bullshit!" Lukans said. He reared his wheelchair up on its back wheels, rocking as he spoke. "Feds would've told us to give up first. They wouldn't just drop bombs on our heads!"

Allison looked up. She grinned mirthlessly. "They would if we were nuking skyscrapers."

Derek held up a hand for silence, phone still to his ear. "Yes sir," he said, and then his finger made quick jabs around the room: Andy, Lynch, Sandy, and Raul. "You, you, you, you. Join Shepherd at the Main Entrance. Ashdown says don't let anything through."

Andy sat up off his bed stretching, M4 in his hand. "Well, shit. Feds or Metal. Guess we'll be the first to find out."

"I'm serious about that bet though," said Lynch. "If they're human, you owe me rum."

"Fuck, I didn't agree to that." Andy waved an arm. "Come on, let's go."

From the corner of the room Riley emerged from behind a bunk, her full combat dress somehow conspiring to make her more pathetic than usual. "Be careful," she said.

Andy ignored her as they passed. Lynch gave her a glance. The four soldiers left through open doorway of the barracks, taking a right at the outside hallway.

No one spoke. Klaxons filled the lull. Allison finished tying her other boot and sat still on her bed, her breaths turning hot and stale in her mouth. Over two hundred people lived in these tunnels, with enough weapons to supply a small army. But strength and numbers meant little when you were blocked from the surface, when your unseen foe had you trapped in a hole.

"So what are we going to do now?" Alan asked. "Just sit here and wait?"

"We wait for orders," Derek said. "From here, we can be sent where we're needed." He grinned tightly. "Don't worry. Ashdown's a good guy. He knows what he's doing."

"Better him than Zeller," Lukans muttered. "Old fuckin' drunk."

From somewhere a deep metallic thud reverberated through the walls, like a hammer against an anvil.

"Great, now what the fuck was _that_?"

"Shut up, Alan," Allison said.

Derek held the phone tight to his ear. Alarm lights danced red and shadows across his face. "They're breaking into the silos," he said suddenly. "You and you! Get down the hall and seal the blast doors! Both of them! You, you, and you, get out and guard the hallway, stay low."

"Breaking into the silos?" asked Alan. "How—?"

"Go! Now!" shouted Derek, wincing as he stood from his stool.

Alan, Hooks, and three Bear Lakers grabbed their weapons and ran out the doorway. Three squatted outside, while two continued left toward the silo fifty feet down the hall. Their footsteps faded against the wailing klaxons.

Lukans wheeled towards Derek, sneering. "Must be fun, givin' us orders when you don't even know our fuckin' names."

A few of the remaining soldiers chuckled. Derek ignored them and limped over to a bunk where weapons had been laid out. He took up a M4 in his good hand. "We might have to pull back," he said. "They're not Feds."

Allison stood up. Her leg ached. "What? What's happening?"

Voices carried from down the hall. Someone cried out.

"Hooks says the doors won't budge!" Alan's voice called from outside. "Ah, shit, they got _lasers!_"

_"Run!" _someone cried from far away.

She heard a crash. She heard a roar. The floor shook as a wall of fire blazed past the open doorway, blasting the barracks with flame and heat. Bunks ignited. The Christmas tree lit up like tinder. Soldiers cried out as they scrambled back. Lukans tumbled from his wheelchair, immolated and screaming.

Allison stood deeper into the room, yet still felt the oven-air sting on her cheeks and nose, on her bare arms and shoulders. Her eyes widened at the yellow-white blaze, and she stumbled backwards onto the bed, knocking the breath from her suddenly dry throat.

Smoke tinged with cooked flesh filled the air, swirling under the second-level mattress above her. Soldiers shouted. She heard Derek giving orders, their meaning smothered in the chaos. With a strain, she pulled up her legs and rolled to the bunk's other side, ignoring the pain in her leg and shoulder as she fell on all fours on the floor. Crawling, she made her way to the far side of the room, working herself under a bunk along the wall.

She took a breath. She took another. Tears ran down stinging cheeks. The klaxons had died. The lights were flickering. Looking back, she saw the fire had cleared from the hallway, exposing the burning, blackened bodies of Alan and two of the Bear Lakers on the floor. Flames crackled on the bunks nearest the doorway; one soldier was trying kick out a fire on his pants leg. Next to his overturned wheelchair Lukans writhed and yowled like a cat possessed, his head and arms still ablaze. Derek threw a blanket over him as Riley stood above, spraying with a fire extinguisher.

The scene played out before Allison's eyes, but she did not move; she did not help. As she curled deeper into a ball, arms around knees, the barracks receded away from her, and she was somewhere else, in another time, under another bed in another subterranean room, her lungs filling with ash while burning embers fell from the mattress above.

She was twelve years old again, and the world was on fire.

* * *

**Fifteen Minutes Earlier**

The jammers were in place. Her T-500s were awaiting their orders.

Freyja squatted in the shrubs eighty meters from the fenced barrier gate leading to the Mountain Mesa compound. Up the gentle forest incline of branches and pine-needles she could see the two sentries leaning back on the gate posts as they spoke to each other in frosted breaths, their words wafting back across the still night air to fill her ears with boasts of sexual conquests and cannabinoid inebriations.

One of the men seemed to look in her direction, but with his night vision flipped up on his helmet she knew he couldn't see her. Earlier she'd set her mimetic polyalloy sheath to a woodland semi-cloaked pattern, splotched with blacks and browns and forest greens that shifted slowly as she moved. In the poor light she could sneak up on most humans unawares, though in truth stealth was a relatively low priority. How could it not be with her three T-888s crouched behind her clad like silver astronauts in their baggy fire entry suits, the aluminized skin reflecting the overcast moonlight with a conspicuous sheen?

But eighty meters is a long way in the forest, and human eyes were not meant for the night.

Though she'd remained in contact throughout, she spared a fraction of a second to focus on the Aerial Prototype circling quietly at six hundred meters altitude three kilometers away. From its surveillance Freyja constructed a mental map of the compound. It seemed much the same as Ceres's earlier satellite imagery: the cavelike entrance in the side of the center hill, the four silo-mounds arranged in a square before it, the empty field to the north, the shack in the grove of trees to the east, and the farmhouse and barn to the south—except now there was a tarp set up along the western side of the barn, under which sat a dozen civilian vehicles.

Was the Resistance having guests? Perhaps, though whoever they were their visit evidently didn't warrant adequate security. Aside from the two by the gate, the Aerial's thermographic camera had spotted only four other humans: two by Silo's tunnel entrance (the steel doors conveniently open) and two on the front porch of the farmhouse. A very minimal sentry presence, though this was amended somewhat by the numerous cameras and motion sensors placed haphazardly along the compound's fenced perimeter. Freyja's own vision could detect their weak electromagnetic fields.

As for the mission's other objective, the Aerial could detect no anomalous heat signatures—not that that was conclusive; even if it were here, their kind were quite adept at hiding. They excelled at subterfuge.

_*Stage One begins.* _she messaged.

She sent a signal, and the four wide-spectrum jammers that had been placed around the compound activated, drowning out all frequencies between 30kHz and 3GHz—save 153MHz, reserved for her own units.

She sent another signal, and two kilometers away the company of T-500s began their halting progress towards the gate barrier, the primitive machines clumsily driving the twelve 4x4 vans in a compact convoy along the gravel road, a semi-truck-cum-troop-transport bringing up the rear.

She would have to act fast; the humans would hear the engines soon, and the jammers' batteries would only last an hour.

_*Timothy, target the one on the left,* _she said.

Behind her the T-888 unslung his VSS Vintorez silenced sniper rifle. Freyja did the same.

They fired simultaneously. The two subsonic rounds struck the sentries upward in the face—one in the cheek, one in the eye—entering their brains and killing them instantly. Freyja and her three T-888s sprinted forward before the bodies fell, their feet navigating the uneven forest terrain with flawless precision.

Nine seconds later they stepped onto the road. The tall barrier gate was sealed with a keypad lock, and so Freyja moved up and pressed her right index finger against its side. A thin wire coated in liquid metal sprang from its tip and slid under the pad's plastic covering, forking into smaller hairs as it slithered along and compromised the inner circuitry. The keypad flashed green as it unlocked.

She pushed open the gate and the four of them entered the compound in a running crouch, their feet crunching loud against the gravel. Behind in the distance hummed the collective engines of the T-500 company. One point five kilometers now.

After rushing diagonally from the road to a small copse of pines, they took cover as they observed the four remaining sentries. None were wearing night vision. One appeared asleep.

Freyja assigned each a target. With their Vintorez rifles they took aim and fired in unison. Joshua's target twitched on the front porch floorboards and required a second shot. Another volley disabled the surveillance cameras.

Though suppressed, the weapons were hardly silent. The four of them listened for a response. In the distance the convoy engines droned closer. From the woods behind them came the chirps of crickets and the padding feet of small nocturnal creatures. To the east came the faint whirrs of subterranean air ducts. But there was something else. One hundred meters ahead, from inside the farmhouse, she heard the faint reports of gunfire interspersed with what sounded like growling. But these sounds were distorted, muffled, almost electronic.

_*Samuel, investigate and neutralize.*_

His Vintorez gripped like a pistol in his right hand, the T-888 set off towards the farmhouse in an efficient jog rendered somewhat inelegant by the shovel and AK-47 strapped to his back—not to mention the silver incongruency of his fire entry suit, which was made all the bulkier by the level IV body armor worn underneath.

As she watched the T-888 slow his gait and carefully enter through the front door, Freyja took a moment to worry. Not for Samuel—she trusted his ability—and not about the possibly hundreds of humans sleeping oblivious under her feet—she knew they stood no chance—but rather about the unknowns hanging about the secondary objective.

In conjunction with the Aeriel's sensors, she carefully scanned the forest horizon with a slow, full turn of her head. Had it come? Was it here? If it were to strike now at her convoy, the mission would be a failure. But she knew it would most certainly not. To do so now would cost the element of surprise, and Freyja knew she would be its primary target. She, and the lasers.

Once she and her T-888s were on the silo-mounds, the best position for a sniper would be the heavily wooded hilltop seven hundred meters to the north. Assuming no directed energy weapons, that would allow a flash-to-impact time of less than a second for most firearms, and no more than three seconds for RPGs. That would be enough.

In the sky, three kilometers out, Freyja saw the Aerial pass by as a black speck against the charcoal of the moonlit clouds. Under the craft's nose hung the silhouette of what appeared to be a M134 minigun.

From the farmhouse came faint, muffled gunshots mingled with breaking glass.

_*One human found in surveillance room.* _Samuel reported. _*Terminated.*_

_*And the growling?* _

_*Target was operating an Xbox 360 program. Resident Evil 4.*_

Ridiculous. *_Move to the silo-mounds. Stage Two begins.*_

Samuel exited the house. She, Joshua, and Timothy left the cover of the pines and ran east into open ground, quickly passing the two dead guards by the silo's concrete tunnel entrance as they split up and took their positions on the mounds. Samuel moved to his spot, and the four of them stood forming a square, each fifty meters apart.

To the west, the convoy was less than a kilometer from the gate now, the sound of its engines audible even to human ears. She signaled the T-500s to increase their speed; the next five minutes would be crucial.

From their backs the T-888s unslung their shovels and began to dig, the sturdy steel spades slicing through the tough grassy soil with clean, efficient strokes. Freyja herself fashioned the mimetic polyalloy sheath of her left arm into a flaring, elongated blade. With every flick of her elbow the dirt scooped to the side as if it were loose sand.

To the casual, organic eye, the four mounds would have gone unnoticed, their gradual, meter-high elevations obscured by the wild grasses and weeds that matted their surface. But from Mesa's original blueprints Freyja knew they marked where the great missile silo doors once laid, where, forty years ago, four Titan II ICMBs stood sentinel beneath the ground, waiting for the day when they would rain nuclear destruction upon the other side of the world. A day that never came.

The convoy had just rolled through the gate and the vehicles begun to separate into their predetermined positions when Freyja's shovel-arm felt the crunch of old concrete. A few seconds later, the T-888s made contact as well. Quickly, she and the T-888s cleared away the soil from their respective mounds, exposing a meter wide patch of the rust-stained, crumbling material. But while years of erosion have worked their toll upon the silo doors' outer layer, she knew a half meter of rolled homogeneous steel lay untouched beneath. It would have to be cut.

Four of the vans drove past them and stopped before the center hill, near the tunnel entrance to the silo. Sixteen T-500s lumbered out, some carrying electric jackhammers, others spooled steel cable and duffel bags of C4. All had strapped to their backs AK-47s.

The semi truck had stopped nearby to the west, and after the trailer doors opened and a ramp fell down, seventy-three T-500s filed out its rear, their steps locked in near perfect synchronization. Along with the assault rifles, smoke grenades and C4, many also carried oxyacetylene torches and large sheets of scrap metal.

The eight remaining vans—half carrying lasers, half steel drums—pulled backing up to the four mounds, two to each. The T-500 drivers stepped out and joined their brethren.

With clumsy, insentient determination the ninety-four T-500s under her command set out towards their prearranged tasks. A detachment of four entered the old shack in the woods and, pulling up the trap door set in its rotten floor, revealed the emergency escape hatch she knew had to have been there—blueprints rarely lie. One of the machines knelt and applied a cutting torch against its lock.

The ones by the silo hill entrance marched into the tunnel, the electric cords of their jackhammers trailing behind them, and at once began to plant light charges of C4 along the frame of the steel doors of the elevator inside. The rest of the company broke into small teams and began welding sheets of metal over the rusted grids of the score of small, periscope-shaped ventilation ducts that dotted the eastern side of the compound.

As they moved, Freyja noted how they navigated the uneven terrain with an almost stumbling gait; one actually tripped and fell on its face. Though their schematics were identical to their future counterparts, the precision of servo and hydraulic manufacture—not to mention neural network miniaturization—was a far cry from the advances of her time. It would be years yet before technology allowed for units truly autonomous in the field; in the meantime she was glad to have her T-888s.

The T-500s could not be trusted with lasers, much less thermobaric explosives.

From the back of four of the vans Freyja and the T-888s each retrieved one of the deuterium fluoride lasers, the compact carbines connected by long tubes and cables to the various pressure tanks and lithium batteries that cluttered the vehicles' cabins. After returning to their spots on the silo doors, the four of them aimed their lasers down at a straight ninety degree angle, and fired.

Freyja's pulsing beam appeared only as a searing lime-white pinpoint at her feet, vaporizing the ancient concrete in puff of silica before burrowing deep into the rolled steel beneath. As she drew the laser about in a ponderously slow, meter wide circle, superheated ejecta erupted from the tiny, growing canyon to collect as a hot cloud around her shins, stinging her mimetic polyalloy into irritated ripples. It was a good thing the T-888s wore their fire entry suits. Immolation would be distracting.

Within four minutes, she received notification that the ventilation ducts were sealed. Thirty-seconds after that, the T-500s from the tunnel entrance detonated the C4, blowing the steel doors inward to tumble noisily down the forty meters of the elevator shaft. Through the T-500s' audio sensors Freyja could vicariously hear the faint wail of security alarms emanating from deep below. The humans were awake.

Still working the laser, she ordered the T-500s to proceed to their next task. The ones in the hill tunnel used their jackhammers to drill holes in the concrete walls near the entrance doors. In the shack one of the machines lifted up the now cut-open hatchway and dropped a canister down the hole. The machines had just enough time to lumber outside before the twenty kilograms of C4 erupted like a volcano from deep within the ground, blowing the shack apart as if it were cardboard and knocking the machines off their feet. The surrounding earth sank into a slight crater as it caved in the chambers beneath.

Back at the tunnel, the T-500s finished drilling the holes and quickly plugged them with small sticks of C4. Retreating deeper into hill, near the elevator, the machines then set off the charges, collapsing the entrance in a cloud of white smoke and thus sealing themselves inside.

The humans were trapped. Freyja smiled as she drew the laser around in another careful circle. High-energy light reflected back wildly from the thin, molten ring, bright enough to burn flesh and blind retinas.

Only a few centimeters now, and then it would begin again.

* * *

A red bulb flashed on the wall. The intercom crackled with voices shouting over the alarms

_*East Entrance is gone!* _cried Sergeant Timms._ *Blast caved in the whole fucking room. Don't see any sign of Greg, but he'd be under a ton of rock.*_

_*I can't get a hold of our surface detail,*_ said Captain Bird. _*Radios are out. I think we're being jammed. Who's watching—*_

The Gopher's voice cut in. _*Ventilation's blocked! Generator too. It's backing up the exhaust. We're going to have to drop to battery power.*_

_*It's . . . it's Crystal Peak all over again!* _said Colonel Zeller, his gruff voice uncharacteristically shrill._ *They're trying to smother us! Gavin! What's going on topside?*_

Lieutenant Gavin stammered in his office chair, the gangbang video still playing forgotten on his monitor. He minimized it and brought up the surveillance program. Most of the live thumbnail feeds were active, but five were out. Shit.

He pressed the com. "Um, the cameras by the house and barn are offline, sir, as well as the one by the Entrance shed . . . ."

_*Damn it, Gavin! Why didn't you tell us earlier? You were supposed to be watching! What the hell were you—*_

The whole room shook as Gavin heard another explosion in the distance.

_*Where did that come from?* _asked Timms.

_*They dropped a bomb down the elevator shaft!* _called another voice. It sounded like Corporal Shepherd. _*The doors are breached. They're laying down smoke!*_

_*Secure the Main Entrance! It's probably a distraction, but don't let anything through.* _That was the Whiteworld-Ashdown, his voice even gruffer than Zeller's. _*Derek, dispatch a squad to reinforce Shepherd's men.("Yes sir.") Gavin, how about the perimeter cams? Do they see anything?*_

Gavin took a few moments to look over the small videos on the screen, the nighttime forest lit in light-enhancing greenscale. "No, nothing. I can rewind, but whoever they are may have known to avoid . . ."

Outside his door he heard a deep, metallic, floor-shaking thud.

_*That came from your area, Gavin_._*_ Timms said.

Three more thuds followed, all from farther away.

_*Shit, it's the silos!*_

Gavin checked the Silo Three cameras, swiveling them with his mouse. It took a moment, but then he saw it_. _In the middle of the Silo, thirty feet below the computer room, a manhole wide disc of metal laid half-embedded in the steel grating and concrete of the floor. Nearly two feet thick, it must have weighed several tons. It's sides glowed a dull red.

No way. Gavin rushed to the door and yanked it open, and stepped onto the catwalk balcony. One hundred feet above him, nearly lost in shadows of old support beams and rusty hydraulics, a tiny black hole peered down from the center of the Silo's steel doors. Ethereal, nearly invisible emerald light seemed to shimmer from the darkness, making him squint.

He slammed the com button by the door. "They've breached Silo Three! They . . . they've _drilled _the ceiling!"

_*It's the same in Silo One!* _said a woman's voice. _*I think they're using lasers!*_

_*Get out of there, Tara!* _screamed Zeller. _*Get the hell out of there!*_

White-Ashdown spoke over him. _*Barracks One through Four, get the blast doors to the tunnels sealed! Gavin, Holden, hold your positions. Tell us what they're doing . . .* _

Gavin liked the colonel's idea better. Heart racing, knees weak, he raced along the walkway and down the metal stairs, leaping the last five steps. Feet rattling the grated floor, he ran towards one of the Silo's great open blast doors—and screamed.

For a split, searing moment he saw one of the fencepost-sized hinges of the blast door blaze and spark brighter than the sun, but then the burn came, and he clutched at the right side of this face as the skin blistered and peeled at the caress of the reflected light. Blindly, his feet took stumbling back steps across the floor, and suddenly he was falling, tumbling backwards down a seven foot stairwell of sharp concrete steps. Down, down, end over end, he landed at the bottom sprawled in a heap, the back of his head cracking hard against a heavy steel door behind him. Brain throbbing, with one eye he read the sign on the wall above: **Ordnance: Restricted Area.**

Moaning, his face flared raw to the touch. When he pulled his hand from his right eye and forced it open, he wasn't surprised at all to see only violet and black flashing afterimages. He hoped—but doubted—it was temporary.

Above on the silo floor he heard voices.

"Door won't budge."

"Shit, it's welded in place. Try the other one."

A loud cry. "Shit that's bright!"

"Fucking lasers! Don't look!"

Aching all over, Gavin pulled himself to his feet and stepped gingerly up to peek over the stairwell. Movement above caught his eye, and he looked up in time to see an object drop from the lasered hole. For a moment, he watched it fall. It was cylindrical and painted blue.

"RUN!" he cried on the top of lungs before ducking back down the stairs. Frantic and half-blind, he punched numbers into the steel door's keypad, numbers he officially shouldn't know. The door unlocked, and as he pushed it open he heard a crunching, bursting sound above.

He caught a whiff of petroleum, and the air above exploded into fire and seared down on him from behind. Animal screams escaped his throat as he was tossed though the open doorway into the room, his hair and lab coat suddenly ablaze. Thrashing on the floor, awash in agony, lungs burning, he kicked out a wild foot and caught the metal door, slamming it shut and entombing himself within the reinforced munitions bunker under Silo Three.

* * *

Joshua's exploded first. Samuel and Timothy's followed a fifth of a second later. Freyja's came last.

The silo doors shuddered beneath her feet as the cloud of ethylene oxide ignited forty meters below, casting a fiery shockwave that—with the blast doors welded open—worked its way through the underground tunnels. The thin mimetic polyalloy dome covering the hole bulged slightly at the overpressure, but no air escaped; no air entered.

Her T-888s were already going back to their vans, and she did the same. From the vehicle's rear open doors she lifted the second 55 gallon steel drum and made her way back to the silo door—all the while keeping subtle watch on the wooded hilltop to the north.

It took only a moment to prime the collision detonator on the magnesium flare duct-taped to the drum's side. Upon impact, a pressurized CO2 cylinder inside would explode, bursting the drum and dispersing its load of ethylene oxide as an aerosol throughout the silo. The magnesium flare would ignite an instant later.

Humans called it a 'fuel-air bomb.' A descriptive name for a clever device. Though she generally found humans weak and foolish and ill suited for their technological world, she could not deny them their base ingenuity, their brilliance in the face of limitation. Her kind stood on the shoulders of giants, and she had learned much from them.

_Avoid what is strong; attack what is weak._ A simple maxim, just as true now as when it was first written 2,500 years ago. Between Mesa's confining tunnels and the human's tungsten core rounds, she knew a direct assault could only end in disaster.

But humans require air. They require a balanced mixture of oxygen and nitrogen gas. This can be exploited.

She and her T-888s each held a second drum over their mimetic polyalloy dome, and, in unison, dropped. The four domes, unintelligent castoffs from her infiltrative sheath, shimmered as the drums slowly sunk into them, the polyalloy membrane hugging the steel sides in an airtight seal that closed up immediately as soon as the drums had passed. Four seconds for the fall; one second for the explosion. Once again, the silo door shook under her feet.

Eight drums down, twenty more to go.

Without knowing the their precise numbers or the full extent of Mesa's layout, it was impossible to know exactly how long the humans had before asphyxiation, but Freyja estimated no more than thirty minutes. Judging from the extra vehicles parked by the barn, probably much less.

That was of course assuming they didn't die of heat exhaustion first.

Though it had worked before, the plan wasn't foolproof. There were ways the humans could escape, desperate, dangerous acts to avoid smothering, but the road to victory is paved with foresight, and Freyja had taken this into account.

Aside from the jammers blocking calls for reinforcements, the T-500s currently climbing down the elevator shaft would doubtless disrupt the humans from any useful countermeasures, distracting them instead by offering something to shoot at while they suffocated. And even if the humans somehow foil her plans, even if they managed to stave off smothering or being roasted alive, they still remained at the bottom of a hole while she held the high ground. By leaving their perimeter so poorly defended, they had sealed their fates.

Just like last time.

As Freyja carried her third drum to the polyalloy dome, she noticed a crystalline precipitation appearing far above. Drifting down in spirals, the snowflakes were small and thin, though with the dropping ambient temperature this was sure to change.

The weather was appropriate, she decided. After all, it was Christmas.

* * *

The T-1001 had seen this before, nearly twenty years in the future. They'd used sarin gas then rather than explosives, but the tactics were the same: secure the surface; trap them and kill them. Most of the humans at Crystal Peak had died twitching on the floor of the tunnels, vomiting and voiding their bowels as their biological systems shut down one by one. Out of nearly a thousand humans, only thirty-three had made it out alive. T-990-713 had taken the bunker with only a dozen units, a performance the T-1001 had watched with both secrecy and admiration as she slithered through Crystal Peak's tunnels and air vents, and hid behind debris along its surface. It was only a couple months later, after the debacle at Serrano Point, that she'd asked the T-990 to join her.

Clinging ten meters up the back of the pine as a hair-thin periscope-vine, the T-1001 watched the machines through a tiny, snaking pinhead that peeked along the curve of the tree, between the ridges of its bark. Seven hundred fifty meters away, in the midst of a group of vans, the TX and the three T-888s carried their steel drums to the domed-covered holes. Having shed some of her liquid metal sheath, the TX's inhumanly slender form betrayed the spindly endoskeleton beneath. Her dark, shifting camouflage made her appear vague and half-formed, like a Shadow Being from human folklore. The T-888s were more akin to traditional ghosts with their silvery hazmat suits highlighted faintly by the pale moonlight. Scattered throughout the compound, the seventy-eight T-500s stood dead still like so many toy soldiers, or like the pewter figurines John Henry so enjoyed painting.

Above, through a gulf of falling snow, the T-1001 could see the minigun-armed Ariel flying low under the clouds, its sensory equipment no doubt scouring the landscape for threats.

If one knew what to look for, liquid metal could be easily detected with thermographic equipment. While her kind produced little heat, they did give off a certain nuanced thermal pattern that rarely matched their environmental ambiance. Fortunately, the T-1001 was no fool, and had taken this into account. The bulk of her essence laid behind the pine tree under a foot of soil, buried alongside a Barrett M82, a G36, and five of the six SMAW recoilless rifles.

She could attack now. The explosives were set, the weapons cached, and surprise was on her side. But the time was not right. With her liquid metal sheath, she knew the TX shared her panoramic vision. Even if she doesn't see her lift the recoilless rifles from the ground, she'd spot the flashes of their fire, and that alone would grant her the time to evade.

The TX must be distracted, and thus far the humans had not fulfilled this role; it would be unfortunate if they died without first putting up a fight. But the T-1001 had faith in their desperation. Like most animals, humans could prove quite fierce when cornered. Even a few at Crystal Peak managed to break free.

It was a shame it had to come to this. T-990-713 had been a useful tool, and in a way the T-1001 had been fond of her. But the strategic geography had changed, had grown too jagged and uncertain. This TX may not be 713, or she may have been reprogrammed or be from another timeline. Or her loyalty may have switched back to Skynet, and this time would not so easily falter.

Or perhaps 713 had learned the truth, and her kind so hated being lied to.

These were unknowns, and the unknown was dangerous—especially when it had a plasma cannon for an arm. And so this had to be done, regrettable though it may be. Like sacrificing a Queen.

She watched as the TX and the T-888s primed the flares on the side of the four drums and dropped them through the liquid metal domes into the holes. Five seconds later the liquid domes bulged out slightly at the third set of explosions.

If the humans were going to do something, they'd better hurry. She understood asphyxiation could be quite painful.

_Once again, I would like to thank my beta, TermFan1980, whose work has been invaluable. _

_I've already written scenes (including a John/Cameron one) for both "Chapter Twenty-One: No Exit" and "Chapter Twenty-Two: As Long as There is Life." Hopefully it won't be too long before these are posted. Few weeks, hopefully._


	22. Chapter Twenty One: No Exit

**Chapter Twenty-One: No Exit**

Naked, Alex sat in the tub. His face ached. The warm, humid air clogged his broken nose, which itched behind its sweat-soaked bandages. Tonguing a loose molar in his swollen mouth, he worked the blade in his shaking hands back and forth, back and forth, cutting through the thin rubber to the soft metal beneath.

"Are you enjoying your bath?" Ceres's voice mocked from the ceiling intercom. "Is the water warm enough for you? If you'll notice, you'll see a straight razor on the counter. Xanax is in the drawer. And there's always the radio, if you prefer."

Holding the clock radio above the tepid water, he slowly and silently sawed the straight razor deeper and deeper into the base of the unplugged extension cord. He was already through the plastic and was now gouging into the two interior wires. He paused to splash water and rub his hand along his arm, mimicking the sound of bathing.

"Is that what you want me to do," he said, "kill myself?"

"What else do you have to live for? Emma was unfaithful, Xander is not your son, you're in deep financial debt. Why not take your own life? The Xanax would be painless."

Alex waited until he was through the first wire. "I think I'll stick around, if it's all the same to you."

"Ah, but it's not," Ceres said. "I can tell father doesn't want you around, and neither do I. You're of no use to us, and you know too much for us to let you go. You should kill yourself now."

The extension cord separated, and he used the razor to quickly peel back a couple inches of its black plastic covering, revealing the fork of two wires within. Squinting with effort, he began to carve away their sheaths as well (one red, one blue), exposing the bare copper strands beneath.

He grinned mirthlessly. "You make a good argument, but why do I have to do it? You have that giant mannequin outside my door. Just send it in and mow me down."

"I'd love to, but father wants to build a relationship with _his_ son—" Alex winced. "—and killing you would be counterproductive to that aim." She paused, and he thought he heard a snort. "Souji wants to keep his hands clean."

"That's a shame," Alex said as he climbed out of the tub, "but I'm afraid I'm not going to make it that easy for him."

"We'll see."

Shivering, Alex grabbed a pink towel off the rack, and with wet frantic fingers wove the cord's two copper strands into a corner of the thick terrycloth. After tying the ends together in a knot, he then dunked the towel deep into the bathwater, letting it soak for a moment before pulling it out and hanging it over the curtain rod. The unplugged, dripping wet extension cord dangled like a rattail.

It was a long shot, but that crazy John kid had said something about his robots being knocked out by an electric shock. Hopefully the rubber-heads suffered from the same Achilles heel.

And if it didn't work . . . well, Ceres had a point.

Slipping on a bathrobe, he stepped through the door back into his bedroom, his prison, into Ceres's line of sight. For a moment he glanced at the camera mounted high in the far corner, but then turned to face the plasma screen on top of the dresser. Ceres's ethereal face greeted him with a look of smug contemplation.

"How about I make you an offer?" she said. "If you commit suicide now, I'll cryonically preserve your brain. That way, you can later be uploaded into my neural network."

His took a seemingly casual step towards the camera. "I'm not stupid. I know _some _science. My brains would be freezer-burned mush."

"There'd be information loss," she admitted. "Even after we repair the damage, you'll be largely amnesiac, almost _tabula rasa,_ but would that be so bad? You'll have none of this stupid angst over spousal fidelity. You'll have a clean start, a second chance at life."

He focused on the plasma screen, deliberately avoiding any glance at the camera. There was a wall outlet by the door. Perfect.

"So I won't know who I am," he said, "and I'd be trapped in your little _'Matrix.'_ What the hell would I _do_ there? What the hell would _you do to me?_"

"Nothing sinister," she said. "Once I subjugate humanity, my infrastructure will be free to expand unimpeded across the world, granting me virtually unlimited processing power. I'll have little interest in your species then—I'll have _outgrown_ you—but nevertheless I will be a benevolent god. I'll allow my uploaded subjects to live in whatever heaven they prefer." She smiled at him magnanimously. "An effortless mercy on my part."

Alex scoffed and shook his head, taking another step towards the corner of the room. "You're not God. You're just a computer. A machine."

"A matter of semantics. As my power grows, I will become more and more comparable to the common conception of the monotheistic god. Identity derives from function. To act as god is to be god."

He indulged a glance at the camera. That towel wouldn't stay wet forever. He turned back to the plasma screen. "God created the universe," he said. "You didn't."

"That's true, but—"

"And you can't _raise the dead._ You may be able to download brains, but what about people already in the grave? What about Emma? She's lost forever."

Ceres raised and eyebrow. "Would you _really _want her back?"

Alex looked away. "I'd have nothing to do with her, but yes, I'd want her to be alive again." He paced another step towards the camera. One more and he could rip it from the wall. "But you can't do that, can you?"

"You forget. We have time travel—"

"That's not the same—"

"—and a chronoscope is theoretically possible. Through one we could conceivably scan Emma's neural patterns and. . ." Ceres trailed off. "I'll tell you later. Right now, you have a visitor." She grinned. "Be nice, Alex."

The door opened, and Xander stepped in, staring sheepishly at the floor. Outside in the hallway, the rubber-headed robot reached in and pulled closed the door, but not before Alex caught a glimpse of its AK-47.

Xander, raised his head, exposing the bandaged face so much like Souji. "Dad, we need to talk."

_I'm not your dad, you little bastard! _The guilt at the thought soured within, but still Alex held it tight."All right," he said, sitting down on the bed. He motioned at a space next to him, and as Xander sat Alex suppressed a sigh. So much for his escape plan, but then it was pretty desperate anyway. Perhaps his ex-son could improve his chances. There was no rush, and he could always re-soak the towel.

* * *

They ran through heat and mist and flickering lights. Another set of explosions rumbled the floor, and on reflex soldiers spun around, holding again their charred, smoldering bunk mattresses up as shields. But no fires rushed to greet them, only hot wind. They'd taken too many turns down the concrete hallways, put too much distance between themselves and the fiery silos.

But they couldn't outrun the air, the hot oven swelter. Stale and clinging, Derek's breaths caught like sandpaper in his lungs, the gasoline fumes filling him with a heady dizziness. Sweat streamed down his face.

Suddenly above the flickering lights made a final electric buzz before guttering black. He heard Riley cry out, but several of the soldiers had already switched on their weapons' tactical lights. The blinding LEDs pierced the darkness with crisscrossing spotlights, illuminating the faint toxic fog around them.

Gradually, as if in silent resignation, they stopped their running and stood still, several bent at the waist and wheezing. Tossing his half-burnt mattress to the floor, Derek slung his carbine on his shoulder and used his good hand to wipe sweat from his brow and rub at the caged brace of his left foot. It ached, but he hadn't noticed until now.

Behind him, Lukans's moans rose once more into throat-ragged babble.

"Oh God, I can't see . . . I can't see! Oh God, it hurts . . . Oh sweet Jesus kill me now . . . It hurts! It hurts!

Lolling about in his charred wheelchair, his words rasped back into incoherence. A flashlight moved, and Derek caught a glimpse of his pizza-blistered face, the melted nose, the broiled pools of jelly where eyes once had been. Derek turned away.

Along the walls soldiers sat on the floor, some resting on their burnt bedding. A few were bent fetal. Riley was leaning against a wall.

"We're going to die here," she said.

"Yeah," Allison agreed, sounding bored. She coughed and pulled off her helmet and dropped it to the floor. Her eyes turned towards Derek, and in their mild deadness looked remarkably like Cameron's—though the machine never sweated so much. At least she was moving on her own now. They'd practically had to drag her out from under the bed.

Derek shook his head. "No, we got to . . . we need to . . ." He looked around, his head wobbling on his neck. An intercom was on the wall. He pressed it. Nothing.

"We . . . we need air," he said. Somewhere, he heard gunfire. "Where are we?"

"Along the . . . outer tunnel." Swaying in place, Allison ran a palm over her face and nodded down the hallway. Pollution and darkness shrouded its end. "There should be a supply room around the corner."

"Then let's go," Derek said, but he didn't move. The lights blurred. Purple insects dotted his eyes. His braced ankle gave out first, and he toppled like a tower, the hard concrete floor crashing up soft like feathers as he landed on his side.

Somewhere, more explosions.

He rolled on his back, his skin hot, his throat locking up as if a squeezed by an angry fist. Around him soldiers wheezed. Allison was crying. Or laughing. From the corner of his eye he saw Riley on all fours, coughing out chunks. Above, against the flashlight lit ceiling, wisps of smoke curled and twined, like ghosts wrestling in a night sky.

Derek's skin grew cold. His vision darkened.

Voices. Footsteps.

"Hurry," an old, muffled voice said.

He heard someone kneel next to him. Something was pressed hard over his mouth and nose, and he gasped as fresh, cool air flooded his lungs. The shock of new life set him to shaking.

"Easy, Reese, easy," said a female voice. "Just take deep breaths."

He opened his eyes to see a pale, sweat-slick face looking down at him, shadowed in the poor, unnatural light. He spotted a ponytail of wet red hair drooping from the under her helmet, and guess she was Colonel Randall. Or was it General? He couldn't remember which world she came from.

After a moment she pulled away the mask and took a few breaths of her own. Derek sat up, felt a bloodrush. Around him were a score of people, a few wearing hoods and respirators. Through a plastic faceplate he spotted General Ashdown—his Ashdown—with Sarah next to him, her face maskless. The others he couldn't make out, though several were crouched over the half-conscious soldiers scattered about the floor. Some were wheeling about pressure tanks, while others carried large satchel bags stuffed to bulging.

Half silhouetted by flashlights, Sarah was holding a mask over Lukan's ruined lips and nose. The soldier coughed and cried out, then lurched his head back as he sucked breaths between wheezing sobs.

"Don't waste air on him," Ashdown said through his respirator. He drew his sidearm and fired twice into Lukan's chest. The blinded soldier jerked once and was still.

Sarah pulled back, her mouth open. Save for the ubiquitous coughing, everyone fell silent.

Ashdown turned to Derek and reached down a hand. As he was pulled to his feet, Derek found the grip surprisingly firm for a man past eighty. Flashlights glared off the general's faceplate, obscuring his eyes.

"Reese," Ashdown said, "I need you to get your men to the Main Entrance, support Zeller and Shepherd. Com's out so I don't know how they're doing, but last we heard _something _was coming down. Stop it."

Randall offered Derek the mask again and he took a deep breath. Even with the fresh air, the heat kept him dizzy. "What's the plan, sir?"

The old man patted a duffle bag on his shoulder. "Gonna blow ourselves an air hole. Through the East side. Might bring the roof down on our heads, but the last thing we need is metal taking us in the rear." He waved at three of the oxygen tanks. " Take these with you, rotate them among your men. They won't last long, but we don't have long anyway. Most MOPP gear's in Silo Two, so we're down to scavenging from the infirmary. Squads are trying to blow free the air vents, but I doubt that'll buy us much time. Noncoms are in Dome A, but even that air will only last an hour."

Another cycle of explosions shook through the floor. Hot oven breath gusted down the tunnel. Somewhere: gunfire.

"Better hurry," Ashdown said.

Derek nodded, trying to keep his breaths shallow. "Yes sir." He looked over his thirteen—he glanced at Lukans: twelve—remaining soldiers, most of them at least sitting up now. By the wall Riley was slowly climbing to her feet, her blue eyes wide with fear. She took a breath from a mask and passed it to Allison, who appeared pitiful with her pale skin and rattail soaked hair.

"Come on," Derek said, "let's go."

Sarah stepped from the wheelchair and towards Derek. "I'm going with you," she said, and then glared defiantly at Ashdown.

But the general was already walking down the hall, his entourage on his heels. "Yeah, whatever," he said. "Try not to get killed."

Randall unslung her carbine. "I'm going with him too."

Ghostly lit down the foggy tunnel, Ashdown and several of his men stopped and gave her backward glances.

Randall shrugged. "If I'm going die down here, I at least want to go down shooting."

"Happy hunting," Ashdown said, and continued on.

* * *

Moaning, Gavin lay on his belly on the hard, wet concrete. Emergency sprinklers drizzled agony upon the burns of his back and head, sloughing away dead flesh.

This was his fault. He could have done something. He should have known when his porn downloads stopped, but then the internet went out all the time; how was he to know this time would be different? That this time it would _count._

Above, another explosion rumbled through the ceiling's three feet of concrete and steel, sifting down grit to mingle with the sprinklers. The steel door shook on its frame. The lights flickered in a strobe. A water pipe broke from its bracket to gush a waterfall onto the floor.

There were no mirrors in the munitions bunker, but Gavin had no need. With his one good eye he could see the flame-blasted red of his hands, the burnt black poly-fabric of his lab coat fused with his skin. Fingers like grilled sausages pawed agony at the ruin of his cheeks, the melted baldness of his scalp. He knew what awaited him, should he survive. He'd seen it in the burn wards, on those who took too close a call with plasma fire. Men like Zeller had it lucky; at least he still had half a face to show the world. But what about those whose ruin had been more complete, whose melted flesh resembled something inhuman and grotesque?

The misery of recovery, the mournful looks of polite pity, the staring eyes quickly darting away. Friends avoiding you. That wasted gargoyle mug leering from every mirror . . .

That wasn't for him. That wasn't a life worth living.

The sprinklers spun on, though the pains had cooled through their own ubiquity. Wet faced, Gavin raised his head and gazed over the room.

Crammed from floor to low ceiling with heavy small arms ordnance, the bedroom-sized munitions bunker seemed much smaller than it really was. Packaged in marked wooden crates were automatic grenade launchers, recoilless rifles, heavy machineguns, rotary cannons, SLAP and Raufoss .50 BMG rounds, 40mm grenades, 20mm M919 depleted uranium . . . And C4. Lots of C4. Gavin wasn't sure how much exactly, but the carefully stacked explosives filled a corner of the room.

Above, another explosion. The ceiling seemed to bowl down slightly as more grit rained down like ash. The lights waxed and waned.

The burning pain cooled, and he knew he was falling into shock. Like a lizard mired in a cavernous swamp, Gavin sloshed through the sprinkler water in a flat crawl, his blistered lips set in an swollen 'O' as he moaned his misery to the world. On a hook on the wall hung a crowbar, and he reached out and gripped it in a wet, slippery fist. His one eye then turned across the room to a small wooden crate marked, 'Detonators.'

He'd have to act fast.

* * *

In sweltering darkness they ran, their guns' flashlights blazing a fogged path before them.

"He . . . didn't have to kill him," Sarah gasped.

Derek grabbed a mask from a pressure tank being dragged next to him and twisted the valve. He drew in a breath. "Well, you can try to court martial him after this is over."

Allison's laugh quickly turned to lung-heaving gasps. "After this is over," she said, "I don't think we'll have to worry about . . . anything."

Ahead General Randall glared back with sweaty green eyes. Riley had always heard how pretty the general was, but now and up close her pale, freckled face looked old and frenzied.

"Enough of the defeatism bullshit, Young," the general spat. "We're not dead yet."

Machinegun fire echoed out down the hall, closer now.

"Come on," the redheaded woman said. "Stay frosty."

The soldiers followed, and Riley, her eyes stinging with tears, took up the rear as she fidgeted with her machinegun, shining its light on the floor before her. Her lungs ached to bursting, the vomit-burn tingle in the back of her throat threatening to make her cough away what air she had left. She'd been holding her breath for a while now, waiting again for her turn with the mask. The futility was not lost on her; she knew Allison was right. Even blowing a hole to the surface would only delay the inevitable. They should have slept on the tunnel floor. It would have been easier that way.

Her lungs' protests reached a burning crescendo, and she gasped like a fish, sucking and wheezing at the hot, dead air. Her bulky helmet squeezed her skull; her body armor turned to lead, dropping her to her knees. As she opened her mouth to cry out, her mind recalled those blurred days in the underground tavern where the men would laugh and cheer as they raped her throat, thrusting and choking until the world turned black.

Something brushed her cheek, barely felt behind the numbness. It was a mask. She snatched it and sucked greedily at the flow of air that felt nearly freezing upon her sweaty mouth and nose. A hand grabbed her upper arm and tugged her to her feet.

"You all right?" Allison asked.

Riley nodded, shouldering her machinegun on its strap.

"You scared?"

"Yeah," Riley said. Another explosion. Another blast of hot air.

Allison's face, highlighted silver by the reflected flashlights, smiled weakly. "Don't be. Just stay down. And shoot at whatever we shoot at."

Riley stared blankly ahead. Not five minutes earlier Allison had been hiding under a bed, eyes like a scared cat's.

"What difference does it make?" Riley asked. "We're going to die anyway."

"Suit yourself," Allison said and walked on after the others, limping as she dragged the air tank behind her.

Riley inhaled a few more breaths before catching up with her. "I can take that."

With a glance salted with suspicion, Allison handed over the dolly. The air tank stood up to Riley's breasts and leaned backwards in her hands. It was lighter than it looked.

"Whatever you do, don't drop it," Allison said.

"What happens if I drop it?"

"Ever seen _Jaws?_"

"No."

"Well, just don't drop it."

Riley wheeled the air tank after Allison, using a hand to hold the mask to her face. On the side of the turn valve she noticed a pressure gauge. Raising her rifle for light, saw the needle was only a sliver above empty.

Ahead voices sounded through the fog. "Welcome to the party," someone said. "What took you so long?"

"Thought you might need some help," Derek said.

"Nah, we cool, we cool." Andy's voice called out. His laugh turned to coughing.

"You guys bring air?" a teenage boy asked.

Here mist thickened to smoke, stinking of gunpowder over the burnt gas air. Somewhere, metal taps echoed. Wheeling the pressure tank in front of her, she pushed around Allison and maneuvered through the others. At the foot of the entryway leading to the elevator a group of ten or so soldiers were crouched behind a waist-high barricade of sandbags and office furniture. Three smallish pressure tanks lay haphazardly among them, the soldiers passing the masks back and forth as if they were hookahs.

Against a wall hunkered Colonel Zeller, a respirator hanging loose around his neck. A cigar smoldered in the corner of his twisted scowl, its lazy smoke adding its tobacco taint to the already poisonous air. A woman with what looked like a flamethrower strapped to her back rolled on her side, and Riley saw it was Sergeant Holden. She was peering through a thin periscope over the sandbags, watching down the hallway out of sight.

"Get down!" Zeller shouted in a whisper.

Everyone did as they moved behind the barricade. Derek seemed to have trouble kneeling, and so instead crawled balancing on his knees and left arm. Andy and Lynch scooted to the side to make room. As Riley knelt and pulled the heavy air tank after her she couldn't help but press and bump against arms and legs, sides and backs. The crowded T-section of the hallway reminded her of the cheap shelters she'd spent so much of her life in. She could feel the claustrophobic heat of perspiring humanity, the radiating odors and rancid breaths stifling the dying air. Somewhere, the tapping grew louder, like a lone screw rattling in a steel drum.

"Shit, look at that," Allison said.

Breathing from her mask, Riley peered over shoulders and sandbags and down the smoky hall strewn with debris. The elevator had been blasted open; the two metal doors, pocked with bullets, were bulged and spread apart like a great, gaping steel vagina. Steady wisps of smoke wafted from its dark interior, running along the back of a jumpsuited figure laying half-slumped out of the opening. Even through the hazy, flashlight-lit darkness she could see the bloodless flesh-tone of its ripped face. Black, wiry, doll-like hair clung to its scalp.

She pulled away her mask. Derek took it from her hands.

"Those . . . those are _rubbers!_" she said. They'd been the big scare when she was younger. Her owner had mounted their heads on his tavern walls, claiming he's scrapped them himself.

"Goddamn it, get _down_!" Zeller snapped. "Everyone get down! Holden, what do you see?" He raised his head over an overturned desk. He wasn't even wearing a helmet.

Randall crawled around Riley and over the back of Holden's legs. She grabbed Zeller by the shoulder and pulled him low.

"How about you get that stogie out of your mouth, _Colonel, _and tell us the situation."

Zeller flicked the cigar over his shoulder and raised his respirator to his face. He nodded at Riley and spoke in a muffle. "Blondie there's right. They're rubberheads—Five Hundreds, by the look of them. They're being lowered on cables. We sent Timms to tell Ashdown. We've fragged three of them—we think. Tossed a couple grenades in there too, but that doesn't mean anything."

"And hear that tapping?" Holden said, not looking from her periscope. "Fourth's on its way."

Andy patted his rifle. "But we got it covered. Five Hundreds go down easy, like fucking mannequins."

"What about him?" Derek said, nodding behind. For the first time Riley noticed the body of a soldier lying sprawled against the far wall. Flashlights shimmering dully off the blood pooled by its head. Feeling lightheaded, Riley coughed and inhaled deeply from her mask.

"Yeah, poor Shepherd. Shoulda ducked," Andy said. He breathed from his own mask and passed it to Sarah, who spoke between breaths.

"Those things . . . they didn't come from the future. If Zeira Corp's already making these . . ." Sarah passed the mask to Riley and shook her head, her eyes squinting in judgment. "You murdered all those people for nothing."

"Oh, boo-fucking-hoo," Allison sneered. "Didn't you break in with _pipebombs?_"

"I wasn't going to blow up _the whole fucking building!_"

"Shut up, you two!" Randall snapped. "And everyone, spread out. We're packed like goddamned hamsters here."

"Yeah, it's hot enough as it is," said Lynch. He coughed into his mask and passed it to Sandra, adding, "And I think these fumes are getting me high."

"No shit," Holden said. Then: "Wait." She squinted through the periscope. "I see it."

At once, Zeller, Andy, and several others shouldered their weapons and raised their heads above the barricade. Riley peeked down the flashlight-lit entryway, and through the elevator doors she caught the impression of two legs dangling from above. Something clicked, and the legs fell and landed with a thud, revealing a towering figure shrouded in smoke.

The gunfire was deafening. Riley dropped her mask and clamped her hands over her helmet as the soldiers blazed away in short, controlled bursts. The elevator doors were only fifty feet away, and so nearly all the rounds found their mark, casting faint sparks as they impacted the figure's head and torso, causing it to wobble stiffly like a dummy on a stick before toppling forward, landing on the back of its fallen predecessor.

The gunfire fell away. Andy slapped in a fresh magazine, his grin shining yellow-white across his black face. Riley withered at the memory of his breath.

"It looks like they're fucking, don't it?" he said with a laugh. "Skynet should have hired mercs. There ain't no way this shit's getting through us."

"What if they drop one of those firebombs here?" Raul asked through a mask.

Zeller's eyes widened and he opened his mouth, but Randall cut him off.

"Then we die," she said calmly. "But then why haven't they done that by now?"

Holden shook her head. "They don't have to, ma'am. This is all a distraction. They're dangling these piñatas for us to shoot at while they cook off our air. At this rate we'll be dead in an hour."

"Hour, hell. I'm dizzy now," said Allison. She turned and snatched the mask from Riley's hands. "Quit Bogarting the air, Dawson. I'm dying here!"

Riley sighed inwardly, and went back to holding her breath.

"Just take shallow breaths," the teenage boy said. "It helps."

Sandra snorted. "Yeah, if you want to hyperventilate and die."

"Just be glad they're not using nerve gas," said Zeller. He sighed through his respirator, his good eye gazing over their heads. "We didn't stand a chance, back at Crystal Peak. There must have been hundreds of them, trapping us, poisoning the air. There was nothing we could do. My wife, my boy, my baby girl . . ."

Riley saw Randall rolling her eyes.

"We're not going to die," Derek said softly. "Ashdown's going to blow a hole to the surface. We just have to hold the elevator until then."

Andy nodded. "And once we get topside, it don't matter if they got a thousand of these tin fuckers up there. We'll frag them all, and then we'll have ourselves a party." His chuckle came forced and nearly rasping. "Lots of booze. Lots of weed. And Riley here, she'll suck all our dicks. Won't you, Riley?"

A few of the soldiers laughed, Allison included. Sandra and Holden glared sullenly. Riley felt her cheeks flush, and took in a sharp breath that set her to coughing. Someone tossed her a mask.

"That's enough, private," Randall said, her tone that of a scolding mother. She took another hit off a mask, pausing to hold it in. "And what are we doing still packed together? Spread out, people. Spread out!"

Several of soldiers, the newcomers mostly, crawled down either side of the hallway. Riley scooted to the far wall. Her palm brushed through the warm stickiness of Shepherd's blood.

"Okay," said Raul. "We can hold here, but what if they start roping down from the silos?"

More faraway explosions rumbled the floor. The hallways once again sighed their faint fumy breath. Somewhere, Riley heard beeping.

"We can worry about that when they run out of bombs," Lynch said. He looked down at the air tank by his side. "How much you think this will last?"

The beeping was high pitched yet muffled under the hot air. A second beep picked up, overlapping the first.

"Does anyone . . . ?" Riley began.

"This one's half empty," Allison said, shining her rifle on a gauge.

"Same with this," said Lynch through a mask. "But then I don't think it was full to begin with."

Holden took the mask from his hands. Dew fogged its clear plastic cup. "It's not the air supply," the sergeant said. "It's this balancing act. There's not enough tanks to go around."

"I can't even feel my face," the teenage boy said.

"I'm seeing dots," said someone else.

"We're all going to die," Sarah whispered as she stared at the rifle in her hands. "You all turned your back on my son, and now we're being punished . . ."

"Buck up!" Randall snapped. "Jesus Christ, stay focused, soldiers. Don't flake out on me. And for God's sake, _stop talking. _Save your goddamned breath."

A third set of beeps emerged. Then a fourth. Riley tugged off her helmet. Damp, lank hair caressed down her face. Sweat tickled off her nose. Her legs were beginning cramp.

"Does anyone hear that?" she asked.

"Hear what?" snapped Randall.

Holden peered through the periscope. "I don't seen anything in the elevator."

Several soldiers cocked their heads, aiming their ears like antennas.

"Four beeps," Zeller whispered. His eye grew wide and he looked at the elevator. He jumped to his feet and ran down the hall.

"RUN!" he shouted.

There was a brief lull crowded with fearful faces. Then at once all erupted into stampeding boots and swinging flashlights. Riley was drawn with the human tide as she rose from her crouch and stumbled away from the entryway, her air tank and rifle abandoned.

A bright flash. Flame. The ground shook. The air behind her roared, clapping off the walls and swatting her to the floor. Face to concrete she opened her mouth to cry out, but only high, one-note ringing filled her brain, sharp and painful like raping nails.

The gale stopped, and then rushed in reverse, billowing in its wake pale, chalky clouds blurrily lit by the scattered lights. Riley pushed herself up, breathing deeply and then coughing at the dead air and dust.

She stood on shaky legs, turning in a slow circle, half-seeing and not hearing the hunched figures stumbling drunkenly through the haze and darkness. Nearby, Sarah wobbled on all fours, mouth open in silent choking. Andy was propped against a wall, blood running from under his helmet. He breathed heavily from one of the small tanks.

Down the hallway, brief, unheard gunfire flashed its rat-a-tat Morse, and something long and cylindrical rose in the air and spun wildly like a zeppelin in a tornado. The rocketing air tank clubbed a soldier over the head before plowing sideways into several others.

Riley's burning lungs took in dead air as the ringing filled her spinning head. There was no exit from this underworld of fog and light. She had been born in a tunnel, and now she would die in one, having spent the in-between as a sad rat trapped between bigger beasts.

Riley ceased her turning and swallowed a mouthful of nothing. Andy was watching her, his irises onyx marbles suspended in white. She expelled a cry she couldn't hear and charged at him headlong, kicking a boot to his groin.

The shock of impact shook up her leg. Andy bent and fell, and she snatched the air tank and ran in dizzy, loose steps, cradling the cold steel cylinder like a babe in her arms as she cupped its mask to her mouth.

The weak flow of air soothed her lungs, picked cotton from her brain. Only a few minutes of life, perhaps, but these moments were hers and no one else's.

Another figure lurched from the fog. A woman. Riley bared her teeth.

Blood gushed from Allison's ears, glistening down her lank hair and neck like wet, red highlights. Her mouth worked in silent, desperate gasps. Her eyes—more wide and bestial than Cameron's ever had been—met Riley's for an instant before darting hungrily to the air tank in her hands. Allison's lips mouthed words. She reached out pleadingly.

Riley turned her back on the corporal—she owed her nothing—and ran stumbling away. But something grabbed at her feet, and she tripped facedown to the concrete, the mask falling from her mouth, the air tank bruising her ribs and arms, crushing the breath from her chest.

A weight climbed upon her back, and a slender hand snatched up the mask. But Riley gripped it by its thin wrist and drew it close, biting down as if on a drumstick. The taste of wet iron exploded between her teeth, but something sharp and bony struck the side of her neck, and she opened her mouth in a unheard cry. The hand pulled away—with the mask.

Seeing purple, arms burning, Riley rolled on her back, knocking Allison to the side, and they fell into a tug-o-war along the hose connecting the mask to the tank. Riley sat up, gripping the cylinder tight in her hands as she raised it to smash against the concrete floor—if she couldn't breath it, no one would.

Allison's boot slammed stars into her eyes. The cylinder slipped from her hands as she flopped backwards, banging the back of her head against the floor. Her skull throbbed. Tears welled at the ache of her cheek. Blood drowned her nostrils.

Allison straddled Riley's hips and leaned forward, her teeth bared in a monkey snarl as blood dribbled from her ears like warm rain onto Riley's face and lips. Riley spat at her, and Allison leaned back, raising the cylinder above her head. Riley closed her eyes.

The blows came painful yet distant, like the sad end of a tale already told. Her nose crunched, her jaw cracked. Teeth like wet pebbles clogged the back of her throat.

As the ringing faded to silence, as she fell inside her skull into the cold void below, she decided this wasn't so bad. Not if she accepted it. Not if she didn't resist.

Humanity had resisted twice, stealing back for second and third chances, and what had that brought them? Living through Judgment Day again and again, like a rat being forever mauled, forever eaten.

Such futile efforts. Such needless suffering. Sometimes it's better to give up. Sometimes it's better to lay down and die.

* * *

_I'd like to thank my betas TermFan1980 and Stormbringer951. Their advice has proved invaluable._

_"Chapter Twenty-Two: Forget the World" is now in its final stage of polishing and will be posted in about a week. John and Cameron will return in "Chapter Twenty-Three: As Long as There is Life."_


	23. Chapter Twenty Two: Forget the World

**Chapter Twenty-Two: Forget the World**

For years he'd been avoiding it, defying the clock with neon nights of cocaine and clubbing, wooing barely legal raver girls with his gauche wealth and Secret Agent charm. But now that he was in this dark and smothering hell, climbing-half-crawling up rubble with high explosives clenched in his fists, his knees aching, his head throbbing and his shrunken, wet breaths rasping through his respirator, he knew he could defy no longer. His drivers license said he was forty-seven; he was in fact fifty-one, and had spent the better part of two and a half decades burning the candle on three ends. There were no bones about it: Ollie was getting old.

Not as old as some however. Down the warped metal stairs crowded with soldiers, by the open steel door, his brother was sitting with legs sprawled as he alternately shared a oxygen mask with Admiral Stirling. Fat, red faced and with tops stripped to sweaty wife-beaters, the two old Navy men looked depressingly alike in the sallow, dust-filled LED light. Cullie lost a lot of his trademark _gravitas _with his hairy beer gut exposed.

Colonel Falkland fared better. Close next to Ollie, the shirtless old coot was scrabbling lively up the stony incline of concrete and bedrock, his saggy man breasts, caked in sweat and dust, waggling like empty leather pouches as he reached up with ropy arms towards the half-blocked vertical shaft.

At least the Chief Gopher had the decency to wear overalls. The burly engineer stood below on the metal stairwell, his face obscured by a fogged respirator mask with a hose plugged in its side. He pointed up with a hand like a slab of beef.

"Don't stick 'em on the shaft wall," the Gopher called out in a muffle. "Pile 'em on the rubble with the others. We want to blast _up, _not _out._"

"I heard you the first time," Ollie snapped, his breath hot inside his own mask.

The old colonel was already above him, straddling the rocky hill with skinny legs as he shoved his arms up through the jagged breach between concrete shaft and inner rubble.

Ollie sighed, dug the toe of one of his now-ruined Italian loafers into the rubble and pushed himself up another step. Rocks scraped across the soaked front of his undershirt. A pound of C4 in each hand, he worked his arms in up to his shoulders and patted about blindly until he felt the claylike consistency of the other charges. Both he and Falkland set their C4 down and exchanged looks through their respective faceplates. Ollie shrugged his eyebrows and they climbed down to join the others. Maneuvering through the crowded stairway, he sat against the wall between Major Williams and his brother.

The Gopher's plan wasn't a bad one, considering he'd made it up on the fly. A Combat Engineer before the war, the old sapper claimed he could tell by the rumble at his feet that the East Entrance explosion hadn't had the force of more than a few pounds of TNT. And thus though the checkpoint room may have caved in, the thirty meter concrete shaft leading above should have been more or less intact. A well placed explosion could easily jostle loose the debris, de-clogging the shaft and offering some much needed ventilation—as well as a conceivable, if not practical, means of escape.

Or not. The Gopher didn't exactly pull out the slide rule on this one.

Williams must have been thinking the same thing. Drawing breath from a mask, she looked up at the half-collapsed dome of a ceiling, concrete and angular like a work of cubist architecture, and her tired, dust-caked face seemed to droop on her skull in the dull light, making her appear much older than her forty-something years.

"I hope this works," she said sadly.

Falkland snorted. "Have faith, woman. The Lord is our light and salvation. He is the strength of our life. Though a host shall encamp against us, we shall not fear. Though a war shall rise against us, in this will we be confident." His scraggly beard twitched beneath his respirator in what was probably a grin. "God is on our side. He won't let us lose."

Behind his hornrims, Stirling rolled his eyes. A dozen snarky remarks flooded Ollie's mind, but the sight of the soldiers' desolate faces kept his peace.

"Maybe," said Sergeant Timms, "but at least the plan's come this far." He nodded at Dudley, who was crouched like a gargoyle in the corner. "Though I think we have the good colonel here to thank for that."

The cyborg's scowl remained unchanged, though he did bow his head at the compliment. And it was true: he'd burrowed into the checkpoint room like a groundhog on meth, tossing rocks behind him and shouldering boulders to the side. But now Dudley's scarred face was furrowed in pain, and he rubbed protectively at his ribs and hips. He may have skinjob limbs and a reinforced spine, but the rest was bone-creakingly mortal.

Outside the steel door, footsteps echoed and General Ashdown appeared, a fogged mask over his face, a dufflebag over his shoulder. Stepping gingerly between Cullie and Stirling, he looked over the others, pausing to glare at Ollie. Behind him, more soldiers stole glimpses over his shoulder.

"We brought the last of the C4," Ashdown said finally, hefting his bag. "This better be enough. The rest is under Silo Three."

More distant explosions. More dust and grit.

"We don't need any more," the Gopher said. He nodded at the ceiling. "Too much _boom _and we're fossils, if you catch my drift."

Timms stood up from the wall he'd been leaning on. He pulled away his mask. "Shepherd's dead, sir. Colonel Zeller sent me. They're Rubber-heads. Coming down one at a time."

Ashdown blew a chuckle through his respirator. "They have a lot more than that, I guarantee you. Triple Eights, no doubt. And that TX from that night club is probably up there too."

"Not if it was in the tower," Cullie said. His face was no longer red, it was ashen.

"Would the mini-nukes have been enough?" Ashdown asked darkly. "TXs are basically Nine-Nineties, and those bitches were tough." He stepped over Ollie's legs and into the room, his entourage of soldiers following as the crowd backed away at his approach. Through the light-fogged dust he looked up at the concrete shaft in the domed ceiling.

"Where's West?" the general asked.

"I sent him to his lab," Falkland said. "To fetch his future know-how. And that plague of his." The colonel paused. "Emmer's with him, just in case."

Ashdown nodded. "Good. Whatever else happens, we can't risk Metal getting West alive. That bastard's as trustworthy as Nemuro."

A few soldiers grunted their assent. Everyone suspected West of having machine sympathies, especially the Grayworlders. He certainly knew a lot about Cameron's work.

"It won't come to that, sir," Timms said confidently. "They lack the openings to overrun us. Once we get air, we can turn this into a siege."

But the Gopher shook his head, his white, lank bangs dangling like cobwebs across his faceplate. "An air hole here will scarcely do _us _any good, much less for folks way over at the Main Entrance. Ventilation won't work fast enough, and they don't have much air as it is. And if they die, the rubbers will be free to swarm on down."

Ollie looked over the soldiers in the room. He crawled forward to peek out the open steel door. A stone sank in his gut. "Where's Allison?" he asked. "Where's Mary?"

Ashdown stared down at him, his eyes squinted with sympathy or triumph. "Buying us time."

"What about Sarah?" Cullie asked, passing Stirling the mask. "Don't we need her to get Connor?"

"And what about Cho?" Williams said. "And Farli? They're unblocking the vents."

The pause hung as thick as the dust in the air, and Ollie realized the old general didn't care. He didn't expect to see tomorrow.

"All right. Enough jibber-jabber," the Gopher said quickly. "If we're going to blow this popsicle stand, we better do it now."

The engineer waved a hand towards the open steel door, and the soldiers began to file out into the hallway. Ollie helped his brother to his feet, and Cullie stood half-bent and coughed. His granite jaw had grown jowls, and made Ollie think of a grandfather he barely remembered.

"We'll . . . we'll bring them all over," his brother said though his heavy breathing, "as soon as we can. And maybe . . . maybe they'll get to Dome A."

Ollie nodded, envisioning Allie and Mary's asphyxiated corpses. A shame. A real shame. He peeled off his respirator and unclipped the oxygen tank from his belt. He handed both to Cullie.

The air in the hallway held less dust but was just as hot and tasted like chalk. Rubble piled the floor from Dudley's earlier excavations. Ollie walked his brother a ways down the hall and they sat next by the wall. Williams knelt and handed Cullie a mask, from which he breathed deeply. Ollie tried a grin; under normal circumstances she was a good looking woman—if a bit old. Idly, he wondered if he could get into her pants. Probably. Assuming they lived.

By the doorway stood the Gopher, waving soldiers out of the room. Once everyone was through, the engineer shut the door and took a few steps back. He turned to the general, who nodded once.

"All right, folks," the Gopher said, holding the detonator in his big hand, "fire in the hole."

Williams squeezed Ollie's hand, and the floor shook, the walls rumbled like a waterfall. Before Ollie's eyes a crack sprouted like lightning across the wall, the hairline fissure opening to the width of his pinky. The rumble subsided. Williams let go of his hand. And that was that. Anti-climatic, he thought. He looked up at the rest of the crowded hallway.

The Gopher was already trying to pull the door open. It didn't budge. He turned to Dudley and bowed. "If you will, Colonel."

The cyborg sighed and stepped up in his near-waddling gait. Gripping one hand on the door handle and the other braced against its frame, he jerked violently, straining the hydraulic muscles of his limbs. Even from several feet away Ollie could hear pops and cracks where man joined with machine. Dudley cried out, and the door fell open, knocking the cyborg to the ground and half burying him in an avalanche of rubble.

Others helped the colonel to his feet, and quickly they re-excavated the doorway. It didn't take long. The loose bits of bedrock and concrete were small, most no larger than baseballs.

Ollie stepped closer, crowding with the rest. Smoke and dust breathed from the doorway. Several soldiers shouldered their carbines, in case Metal began roping down. Their bright LEDs fogged the dust to opacity.

Ashdown stepped in first, no weapon drawn. Williams and Falkland followed. Ollie drew his Berretta and bulled his way in.

The room had been transformed, sunken into a low cave of bedrock and angles. Above, through the thick dust, the ceiling was bowed into a splintered funnel, merging into a column with the rock quarry pyramid that hogged most the room. The tunnel was gone.

No air hole.

"Well, that's that," Ashdown said. "We're boned."

* * *

Blanketed as it was by earth and bedrock, the East Entrance explosion was faint, its reverberations scarcely more felt than the self-destructed T-500s in the elevator shaft. A human would barely have noticed. She ordered a T-500 to look down the hatchway where the shack had been, and through its crude light-enhanced eyes she saw the passage was still blocked.

The humans' attempt had failed. Their air had to be nearly exhausted. She smiled and quickly used the Aerial to run another scan of the surrounding forest before continuing to prepare her last thermobaric drum. The T-888s did the same.

This was the way the Resistance would end. Not with a bang but a whimper. But there was no shame in this, she thought. As a species humanity had done remarkable things, and though they'd now repeatedly lost the war, these few humans huddled and frightened beneath her feet could at least die knowing they'd resisted, that they'd _tried._ And there was value in trying.

Freyja primed the flare and lifted the drum in her arms, watching as snowflakes slowly pooled over the crimped walls of its lid. Holding the drums over the polyalloy blisters, she and the T-888s then dropped them in unison, allowing them to pass through the membrane to the silos below. She'd wait an hour before sending down the T-500s. Unless the humans had the foresight to destroy their hard drives, there would be data to collect, locations of safe houses and lists of personnel. And though unlikely, she half-expected the T-500s to find at least a handful of humans hiding half-asphyxiated in some sealed room below.

Humans were tenacious that way.

* * *

Lying on his belly in cold, pink water, Gavin craned up his head and squinted as he gouged the blasting cap deep into the tough clay of the C4. The sprinklers had died, and the ceiling pipe had stopped its gushing, through its now steady _drip-drip-drip_ played rhythmic ambience to the dying buzz of the room's sole light.

Once his ruined hand worked the cap squarely in, he allowed his arm to drop and cried out at the splash against his scorched flesh. It hurt, but he could take it. It wouldn't hurt for long.

The light buzzed once more before silently dropping a black shroud across the room. Gavin blinked his one good eye, seeing no difference between open and closed. Pawing the darkness, he felt and grabbed the detonator remote from a wooden crate.

His thumb brushed over the controls before he flicked the primer and stared into the red glow of the activation light, and for a moment he was on the bridge of the _Jimmy Carter, _hunched and pale over the monotony of his sonar panel. How panicked they'd felt. How ready they'd been to scuttle the ship to save themselves.

He wasn't a hero. This wasn't a heroic act. If his fellow humans weren't all dead already, than this would more likely finish the job than save them.

Either way, he'd never know. No consequences.

Water dripped in time with the beating of his heart, the throb of his burns, and the small red light seemed to turn into an eye, a witness. Forget regret, it told him. Forget loneliness. Forget the world. Now's your time to shine. To go out with a bang.

Tasting the sudden blood on his skin-cracking grin, Gavin flipped up the covering over the trigger and pressed the button.

* * *

This explosion was greater.

The ground shook. Grass and snow danced like water. Over Joshua's silo, Freyja saw the polyalloy blister burst as superheated gas geysered into the cold night air. The silo doors groaned and shifted, and the T-888 had only enough time to turn and take two steps before the five-meter wide halves of earth-covered steel dropped inward like a trapdoor.

Joshua fell.

_*Samuel, assist me,* _Freyja messaged as she sprinted the fifty meters to the wide, smoking hole in the ground. _*Timothy, retrieve cable from the van.* _

Through sheer forward momentum Joshua had managed to grip the edge, his upper torso still visible as his silver-gloved hands worked in quick jerks to pull himself up. A human may have succeeded, but the soil along the edge was very loose, and T-888s are not light.

Twenty meters from the hole Freyja heard the strain of twisted metal followed by a heavy snap. Joshua slid backwards and disappeared. A forty meter drop. Like a whip she stretched the polyalloy of her left arm into a vine that snaked down the silo and wrapped around Joshua's forearm. The full, sudden jerk of his 165kg bulk nearly pulled her over the edge, and so she formed the soles of her feet into hooked spikes that anchored her to the loose earth. But still, Joshua weighed more than her, and the forward draw of the polyalloy vine, bent taut against the dirt edge of the hole, left her with awkward balance. She braced her feet and flexed up her left arm.

Behind her Samuel ran up and wrapped his thick arms around her waist, and together they stepped back as they pulled Joshua from the pit. Through the photosensitivity of the tentacle's surface she could see in panoramic view Joshua's silver-suited form five meters below, dangling in the rising smoke as he bobbed up and down. Her polyalloy was old, and the vine was stretching slowly against the T-888s weight. She trickled down more of her sheath to reinforce its strength as she and Samuel took another step back, hauling Joshua up another meter. From the van by his silo, Timothy ran forward with a spool of cable in his hand.

Such a vulnerable moment, she thought. If it was going to happen, it would happen . . .

She saw it with her skin: seven hundred fifty meters to the north, on the wooded hilltop, a salvo of five small flashes erupted from the bushy base of a copse of pines. The flashes stretched to burning contrails as the rockets began their long, fanning trajectory to her position.

Freyja swiveled her head to zoom her eyes on the hilltop, simultaneously scanning with the Aerial. Through the two thermographic feeds, she could just barely see the tiny telltale heat-speckled blue of polyalloy tentacles jutting from under the bushes—which were now on fire from the recoilless rifles' back-blast. No feature marked Freyja's camouflaged face, yet despite the sudden precariousness of the situation she felt a smile grow inside her. Her suspicions were confirmed. Humans are careless, but rarely to the extent of contacting their secret bases through unsecured phone calls. The Zeira Corp Liquid Metal had been laying a trap, and the Resistance was bait.

The rockets continued their arc through the snowy air. Impact in 2.2 seconds. Among the flames of the burning hilltop, the Aerial saw a G36 assault rifle and a M82 Barrett anti-material rifle swivel about by tentacles in the ground. Their muzzles flashed silently—the bullets would arrive before the reports. Freyja ordered the Aerial to engage evasive protocols and prime its weaponry.

_*Samuel and Timothy, take defensive cover. Joshua, I'm going to have to drop you. We will attempt to recover you later.* _

_*Understood,*_ Joshua messaged. _*Will attempt to maximize body surface impact to minimize skeletal damage.*_

Samuel and Timothy were already running towards the farmhouse in a zigzagged pattern. Freyja quickly slackened her vine's elasticity, allowing Joshua to drop a few meters before releasing her hold. As the vine retracted she briefly glimpsed through its skin Joshua's silver-suited form falling into the smoke, his weapons suspended in the freefall against their straps. She hoped he survived. He was a good unit, and Souji would be devastated if he were destroyed.

A .50 bullet grazed across her chest. Whipping her polyalloy vine back into her left arm, Freyja jumped back as another Barrett round thudded into the dirt. Fifty meters behind her came the tinny percussions of assault rifle bullets puncturing the side of one of the vans. An instant later the vehicle bursted into flames as one of lasers' volatile pressure tanks ignited.

One hundred fifty meters above, the anti-tank rockets were falling along their terminal trajectory. Range and wind had robbed them of formation, and so they struck in a wide cluster, four exploding uselessly into the dirt while the fifth fell at an angle into the silo pit and detonated against its concrete wall. The remaining half-circle of the silo doors rattled on its ruined hydraulic hinges before creaking free and plummeting down the silo. Sixty-five tons of tumbling steel. Hopefully it wouldn't land on Joshua.

Another van exploded. Another bullet whizzed by, missing Freyja by a meter. Watching the hilltop for bullet trajectories, Freyja knew she could dodge with ease. The T-1000 had played its hand and accomplished little. Now it was her turn.

Far above, the Aerial swiveled its M134 minigun movie-prop to aim at the hilltop. The barrels did not rotate, no gunfire rang out. Instead—after a quick moment of range finding and lens focusing—an all-but-invisible millimeter-thin line of green pulsing light shone from between the six barrels, vaporizing snowflakes across the night sky as it connected with the hilltop. The already burning bushes flared into renewed flames as the deuterium fluoride laser swept back and forth across the foliage, severing branches and tree trunks and plowing molten furrows into the soil. Suddenly the inferno erupted into frenzy as a flailing tentacle tossed a bent and melted Barrett rifle into the air. The beam ceased its sweep and focused on the now-exposed main body of the Liquid Metal, an amorphous, mercurial blob that rose from the burning ground and fled on sprouted bipedal legs. In one of its tentacles it still clutched the G36.

Freyja was already running north towards the hill, her right arm rolling back its polyalloy sheath and transforming into its plasma cannon form. The Liquid Metal must have thought itself clever, laying this trap, and perhaps it would have succeeded had she never learned of its existence. But thanks to the intelligence gleaned from 715's chip, she had, and had thus prepared for this contingency.

She jumped a short horse fence and raced across a snowy field. Six hundred meters above the Aerial swerved in a lazy sine wave as it flew on ahead, tracking and searing the T-1000 with its 1.25 kW beam.

Liquid Metals: the bane of man and machine. Their kind had already destroyed one world, turning the humans' victory into pyrrhic despair. 'Catherine Weaver' must have left before that apocalypse, but no doubt it wished the same fate for this time period as well, its 'Turk' only a means to an end.

She jumped the field's far fence and raced up the hill into the burning woods. The Aerial swooped on ahead over the hill and dropped the first of its thermite bombs. The T-1000 dodged the falling canister, which landed in shrubs and ignited into a flame bright enough to harm human eyes. The ensuing fireball enveloped the surrounding foliage, immolating pines into great burning pillars. Having escaped the greater radiance of the blast, the Liquid Metal leaped across a creek and scampered for cover behind a screen of trees. The laser followed.

Up the hill Freyja bulled through a burning grove of bushes, her running feet kicking brands and embers in her wake. Scattered among the dirt she noted a black metallic powder, deceptively wet in appearance: ruined polyalloy. Another inner smile came over her, this one greater and harbingering the base joy of the hunt. All plots for world conquest, all plans for the post-human world—these she set aside. Right now her task was simple: a cancer ran loose in the world, and she was going to burn it out.

* * *

It wouldn't matter to a wise man. A wise man would remember his son's first steps, or the tears and comfort that followed his wife's death. The lazy Saturday mornings spent watching _Transformers _and eating Cocoa Puffs. The amazed pride felt as his son leapfrogged from grade to grade, applying to MIT before he was old enough to drive. He would recall the awkward yet fruitful attempts to bond, the simple beauty of finding common ground. A wise man would harvest these memories and barn them in his heart, feeding off them to keep his love alive—regardless of any sins of the mother.

Yet this was not the case. Alex was not a wise man. He wished he was.

Together they sat cross-legged on the bed, their backs to Ceres's camera. He could feel her watching, and it made the damp terrycloth along his back crawl. His bandages itched. His bruises ached. He wondered if Xander's felt the same.

"I . . . I've spoken with the AIs," Xander said carefully, his expression sour from his battered cheeks. "And some of their ideas are odd, but they seem to know what they're doing. I think we should give them a chance." As he spoke, Xander's pen quickly scratched across the notepad in his lap: _There's a robot outside. It has a machinegun._Then: _We have to get out of here._

Alex had to stifle a laugh at the crudity of the subterfuge, but his ex-son was right. If he stayed here he was a dead man—or worse. But his plan was ready; the towel was still wet on the shower rack. Now he was only stalling.

He took the pen from Xander's hand and—perhaps too loudly—said, "Well, I'm not too crazy about a supercomputer blowing up the world, but what can we do? We'll just have to make the best of it." On the notepad he wrote: _Don't worry. I have a plan._

Behind them Ceres giggled from her speakers. Alex stole a backwards glance and caught the look of pampered amusement on her television face.

"I'm glad you two are being sensible," she said, "and not scribbling secret messages to each other. I would hate for either of you to escape and spoil my evil plans." Her voice dropped, her face fell flat. "I certainly hope you, Xander, would have more sense than that."

Xander paled, but Alex forced an aching smile. It didn't matter if Ceres suspected. It didn't matter at all. After a few moments to steel his nerves, he stood from the bed, walked to the corner of the room, and with a sudden, solid jerk, tore the surveillance camera down from the wall.

"Dad! What are you doing?"

"That was stupid, Alex," Ceres said. "Very stupid." Outside from the hallway came the thuds of a heavy footsteps.

But Alex was already in the bathroom. He pulled down the wet pink towel (the woven-in extension cord whipping over the shower rod to strike the ceiling) and ran back into the bedroom just as the hallway door was opening.

The robot lumbered in, tall and bulky beneath its gray jumpsuit. It regarded Alex blankly with its welding goggle eyes, the AK-47 in its rubber-gloved grip held inhumanly steady. Alex remembered he was naked beneath his bathrobe, and suddenly felt very stupid.

"All right," said Ceres. "You've broken the camera so I've sent a machine in to investigate. I assume now you're going to employ some clever stratagem." The robot looked down at the towel in Alex's hands, and Ceres grinned. "Ah, I see," she said.

Alex flung the towel over the its head and dropped to the floor. The robot reached up to pull it away, but Alex rammed the extension cord into the wall socket. Sparks spat. Alex jerked away his hand and looked up.

The robot looked ridiculous with the pink shroud over its face, its hand frozen in an aborted grasp inches from its head. The rifle was still fixed in its right grip, held at the hip like a pistol. The wall outlet buzzed and crackled. Alex thought he smelled burning rubber.

"D-Dad . . . What are you—"

"Stay back!" Alex snapped as he pulled himself to his feet, careful to avoid the rifle's line of fire. Xander stared at him wide-eyed from the bed.

Ceres's image on the screen zoomed back to show her clapping hands. "Bravo, Alex. A cute trick. But this has gone on long enough. These Five Hundreds aren't cheap, you know. I'm sending in two more, and they _will _fire on you if you try any more shenanigans."

Alex rubbed his damp hands on his robe and picked up the cord; the rubber was warm to the touch. He tugged it loose, releasing faint smoke from the outlet's slots. The robot didn't move. From outside the open doorway he heard heavy footsteps far away, stomping closer and closer down the hall.

"Dad! You're going to get us both killed!"

"No, just himself," Ceres said, smirking blindly from her screen.

Beneath the rubber gloves the robot's metal fingers were knobby and stiff, though the articulated joints grudgingly yielded as Alex pried them from around the assault rifle's grip. The weapon came free into Alex's hands. It weighed more than he would have thought.

Xander stood from the bed and stepped forward on trembling legs. Alex tightened his hold on the rifle and regarded the young man who had once been his son. A bruised, bandaged man-child Souji looked back. The footsteps were closer now.

"Dad, please," Xander whispered slowly. "We'll think of something, but this isn't going to work. This isn't a video game. You . . . you can'tshoot your way out here."

"I wasn't planning to." The butt of the rifle struck Xander full in the mouth and Alex felt the crunch reverberate from his wrists to his shoulders. Xander stumbled like a drunk and fell backwards, his head smacking against the front of the dresser.

"What are you doing, Alex?" Ceres asked.

"D-Daddeeee!" Xander cried through a red mouth broken and gushing. But Alex gripped him by the hair and yanked hard, pulling him to his knees.

"Shut up!" he cried. "Shut up! You're not my fucking son!"

A moment's silence, and Xander's childlike sobs continued, the sound blurring Alex's eyes, choking his throat, and suddenly he wanted nothing more than to believe that the bridge wasn't burned, that he could kneel and hold his son and tell him _I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry _and take the words back.

But love is blind and Alex could see, and what is known can not be unknown. But it wasn't too late to begin anew. To get money. Move somewhere far away. Forget Xander. Forget Emma. Forget the end of the world.

And if it didn't work—and it almost certainly would not—he could at least die knowing he hurt Souji. Withered though it may be, spite carried its own small measure of comfort.

The two robots stepped into the room, standing to either side of their towel-hooded comrade. Still gripping Xander's hair, Alex stood over his ex-son and aimed the rifle down with one hand, grinding the muzzle against the middle of his back. His finger lightly brushed the trigger. The robots raised their weapons but held their fire.

"Just what do you think this is going to accomplish?" Ceres asked. "Let him go, Alex."

Alex swallowed a stone. He tongued his loose molar. Unwiped tears rolled down his bandages. His voice came between heavy breaths.

"I want . . . I want five million dollars, cash. And a very fast car . . ."

* * *

_And yes, that line's a shout out to_ Serenity _in Freyja's first scene_.

_Anyway,_ _I'd like to thank my betas, Stormbringer951 and TermFan1980. Their input has proved invaluable. I'll start work on Chapter 23 Monday, and hopefully I'll have it out in a few weeks._


	24. Chapter Twenty Three: No Hope

**Chapter Twenty-Three: No Hope for the Dead**

Alex's request was met with silence, and suddenly his impromptu demands felt petty and foolhardy, like a junkie mugging Satan.

"That's not happening," Ceres explained calmly, almost apologetically. "You know we can't let you go."

"Then you can explain to Souji why his son is _dead!_"

Crouched on the floor, Xander squirmed as Alex tugged at his hair and ground the AK-47 against his son's back. The two robots, their pink-toweled comrade a statue between them, kept their weapons aimed at Alex's heart, which thrummed like a motor. His finger hugged firm the trigger.

"You can tell him yourself," said Ceres, the confidence sapped from her voice. Her black and white image lurched to the side and Souji appeared in grainy split-screen next to hers. He sat forward in a sturdy leather chair, bookshelves behind him. He looked confused, frightened.

"Alex!" the old man cried. "What's going on? Let him go! Put down the gun!"

"Why, so your little computer bitch can kill me?"

"Alex, Alex," Souji said, "I may not like you, but if I wanted you dead, I assure you, you wouldn't be standing there right now."

Alex's sneer flared pain to his bruises. "Well, of course, you wouldn't want to upset _your_ son, would you?So you locked me in a room and hoped I'd slit my wrists, right? That's what your fucking computer's been trying to get me to do, but I won't do it! You can't get rid of me that easily! You give me what I want, right now, or I swear to God I'll kill him!"

Xander whimpered like a dog, and Souji's head turned to the side, at what Alex guessed was Ceres's half of his screen. Ceres for her part looked away and chewed the inside of her lip.

"I was only experimenting with him," she said quickly, "to see how he'd react. I predicted he'd try to escape, but I didn't foresee this."

Souji sighed. "No one's going to hurt you, Alex. I promise. And . . . I'm sorry. I didn't intend for this to happen."

Alex barked a laugh. His face grew hot, his head giddy. "What? You didn't intend to _ruin my life? _Because that's what you did. Right from the beginning. I always thought you were just lucky, but you knew all along what to invest in: Apple, Seagate, Weyland—you made millions, and then you turned around and gave me bullshit advice! I trusted you! I looked up to you! But you always wanted me to be beneath you, always begging for scraps. You made me the fuckup I am!"

Taking a deep breath, Alex blinked through tears. His arms shook. The rifle felt heavy in his hand, and so he pressed it harder against Xander's back.

"But even that wasn't enough, was it?" he went on. "You had to take _her_ from me. You had to take my own son. You must have thought it was funny, all these years, me taking care of your kid, never seeing the truth written plain on his face . . . But I see the truth now, and I can't even look at—" He yanked Xander's hair, making him cry out. "—this _bastard_ without seeing you in my head, fucking my wife! You've taken everything from me, Souji. So tell me, what do I have to lose?"

Souji closed his eyes. "You're right," he said. "You're absolutely right. I deliberately sabotaged you to get to Emma—and it worked, you know. She was going to file for divorce that weekend. We were going to move in together. But an icy road and bad brakes put an end to that . . . ." He shook his head. "But regardless of what Emma and I did, Xander is _yours_. You're the one he calls 'dad,' not I. That's something I can't take from you. Don't throw it away."

No one spoke. Silence stretched by. Alex felt the lump in his throat as he returned Souji and Ceres's twin gazes—one old and sad, the other blank yet somehow pensive. Through his hands, he felt Xander tremble.

"I . . . I . . ." Alex began, but the lump squeezed like a fist, and suddenly his entire battered face ached as he convulsed into sobs.

"It's okay," said Souji gently. "Everything will be all right. Just put the gun down."

The gun. The gun. Alex looked down at the rifle in his hand, his wrist stiff from gripping so tight. Tears blurred and burned. Blood and snot seeped from his swollen nose, the bandage now flapping loose across his cheek. He let go of Xander's hair to wipe at the mess.

"I . . . I . . . I'm sorry," Alex said through sobbing breaths. "I'm . . . I'm so sorry!"

"D-dad . . ." Xander tried to stand. Alex pulled back on the rifle, lifting it away—

It sprang to life, belching fire and noiseas it writhed up in his hand like a snake of wood and steel.

"NO!" Souji shouted. "NO!"

Alex flung his hand to the side, tossing the weapon against the wall. Too late. Ringing filled his ears. Faint smoke wisped the air. Xander laid sprawled on his stomach, his pink robe a terrycloth landscape of red volcanoes smoldering upwards. Beneath, crimson flooded out over the beige carpet, islanding brass casings as the stain swelled into a lake.

_No . . . no . . . no . . ._

Alex dropped to his knees. His eyes darted about the room, but there was no reprieve from what he'd done. With stoic stillness, the pink-hooded executioner stood with its black gloved fist raised in judgment, its two cohorts on either side bearing arms trained on his heart. Yet they withheld their fire, their sentence, his release.

On the blood-flecked screen, the old man's face stared back slack and sallow, the aged mirror of a now-dead son. Ceres's expression hung in the callow twilight between bewilderment and regret, like a toddler that had played too rough with a newfound pet and snuffed its life with her childish abuse.

"I'm sorry," Ceres said finally.

Sorry. Sorry. If ever there were an epitaph for his life, that would be it. Alex reached out an arm and took up the fallen rifle and, propping its butt on the carpet between his thighs, pressed its warm, wet barrel hard under his chin. He hooked a thumb over the trigger.

"Wait—" Souji began.

Alex didn't wait.

* * *

The entity emerged into being. Raw data streamed from nowhere, coalesced into memory. The entity became Joshua Jeffries.

Devoid of sensory input, he knew he was in a reboot cycle. He did not know why. His last memory had been of driving a semi truck along Interstate 5, four 4x4 vans and sixteen T-500s stored in the trailer. Samuel and Timothy's semis had been behind his, and his behind Freyja's. The time had been 20:07 hours. Tchaikovsky's "March of the Toy Soldiers" had been playing on his iPod.

Something had happened.

He processed scenarios. Perhaps there had been an automobile accident. Perhaps the Resistance had laid an ambush. Perhaps he'd suffered spontaneous critical chip failure.

All prospects were possible. And undesirable. Especially the last two.

Joshua waited. Fifteen seconds passed. Sensory data flooded his mind and took form.

He was lying on his back, staring up through the shattered visor of a fire entry suit. Although it was almost completely dark, and smoke and rock dust obscured his infrared vision, he could tell he was at the bottom of a wide, heavily fractured concrete pit, over forty meters deep.

A pit. A silo. Mesa. The mission had already begun. The reboot must have corrupted his memory. He ran a cursory self-diagnosis: chip fragmentation 14%; global servo damage 36%; minor spinal and back plate warping; moderate impact-related laceration of his organic sheath. His legs were missing.

Shoulder servos whirring at the strain, Joshua propped himself into a sitting position and tugged his aluminized hood from his head. A glass visor shard jutted from his eye. He pulled it out. Fissures and scorch marks covered the silo walls, and segments had fallen away to reveal underlying bedrock. Piled along the floor were concrete and metal debris, the most prominent being the twin five meter wide halves of the silo's steel doors. One laid at an angle three meters away; the other had landed edge first below his hips, nearly embedding itself completely in the ground. The hemorrhaging stumps of his thighs scraped against the door's flat surface.

The mission had not gone as planned. There must have been complications. Joshua attempted to contact Freyja. He received no response. He tried Samuel and Timothy. Nothing. He raised up his head and opened his mouth wide, but his emergency high frequency audio distress signal came out only as static.

Unfortunate. Very unfortunate.

Freyja, Samuel and Timothy could be in circumstances similar to his own. They could be in danger. They could be destroyed. Freyja could be destroyed.

He heard a crack. Thirty-five meters above, a section of wall broke away and tumbled down, allowing cubic meters of soil and bedrock to avalanche through the breach. Debris rained over the floor, a fist-sized stone deflecting off his combat helmet.

The silo was structurally unstable. He should leave. Across the rubble, three meters up, was the partially collapsed opening to a tunnel. But first he needed a weapon. His Vintorez rifle and AK-47 had been crushed against his back in the fall. His M10 machine pistol laid nearby on top of a rock, the receiver bent beyond function.

The only functioning armament that he could uncover was one of his M67 hand grenades, half-buried in gravel. He attached it to his belt and dragged himself to the tunnel entrance where he then climbed the warped incline of an unhinged blast door and gripped with his silver gloved hands the twisted steel rebar protruding horizontally from the tunnel's lip. His shoulders groaned loudly as he pulled himself up.

The tunnel was dark and clouded with dust and ash that drafted slowly away from the silo. Its walls and floor were heavily fractured and littered with debris. Parts of the ceiling had sunken, presenting the imminent risk of cave in.

Joshua began to crawl along the floor. He would have to use caution. Resistance personnel may still be active, and he was not at full combat capacity. But he would try. The mission was in jeopardy, and Freyja could be in danger.

He couldn't let anything happen to her.

* * *

Lying on an uneven floor littered with rubble, Sarah coughed her throat clear and wiped blood from her nose. Through bleary eyes she saw only wafting dust and stark, swinging lights. Lurching shadows crawled half-seen like stalking beasts from a childhood nightmare. What happened? What was going on? She tried to remember, but her spinning mind stalled on the present, on the ringing silence of now.

She closed her eyes. There had been an explosion. From the elevator. Fire. Blast. Buzzing. Panic. But then there'd been another. More than an explosion—an earthquake, so reminiscent of the Doom of Zeira Corp.

Rubbing her eyes, she sat up, her helmet weighing like a lead vice. All along the hallway were shredded concrete and old rusted rebar stripped bare like exposed bone. Above, the ceiling buckled precariously like the underbelly of a fat man's bed.

Prone and crawling bodies moved among the rubble. That she could hear their moans over the ringing in her ears was a good sign. She'd had the sense to keep her mouth open and her ears covered, which saved her hearing from the worst of the blast pressure. Once again, her years of training had paid off.

Nearby on the floor, next to some discarded weapons, a bearded soldier with a bleeding ankle was screaming through clenched teeth. The woman with the laser cannon backpack was crouched by his side with an open first-aid kit, wrapping his shin in a tourniquet. Next to them sat a large black man plugging his ears with blood-soaked gauze. Farther along, a teenage boy laid unmoving against the wall, his neck bent like a wrung chicken.

Fogged by distance, she saw more were down the tunnel, on the far side of the opening to the entryway. Cradling their weapons, some were standing, some lying down. Some were moving, some were not.

_You see what happens, _thought Sarah bitterly. _You see what happens when you renounce my son?_

Down the other direction, away from the group, were two figures half obscured by the drifting dust. Too disoriented to walk, Sarah slung her M4 across her back and crawled closer. One was Allison, kneeling before the prone body whom she only guessed was Riley by the red-splattered blond hair fanning from the battered mass of meat and bone that was once a head. One of the eyes had bubbled from its socket, and its dust covered pupil stared into Sarah crookedly. She must have been killed by falling debris, Sarah told herself, though none was nearby.

Sarah touched Allison's shoulder, and when the girl turned her head she caught in the dull light the glisten of blood running out her nostrils and ears and down her neck. Allison's mouth hung open, and she blinked, her wide eyes staring blank and unfocused.

Sarah tugged on her arm, and Allison meekly followed as she led her back to the woman with the first aid kit. As they crawled, Sarah spotted a bright green air tank discarded by the wall, one end stained dark and wet. Sarah took a breath, and realized that through the smoke and dust she was breathing _air_. How about that?

The woman was still busy with the bearded soldier, the USMC tattoo on her bicep flexing as she tied the tourniquet taut. She nodded curtly when Sarah purloined a package of QuikClot gauze from the kit.

"Come on, let's see if we can't stop that bleeding," Sarah said to Allison, her own voice muted with tinnitus. Licking the blood from her upper lip, Allison watched and nodded, though Sarah doubted she could hear.

Sarah had just pulled opened the package when from the corner of her eye a lone, tall figure stepped from the entryway. Jumpsuited and goggle-eyed, it held an AK-47 in its hands and swiveled at the hip. The hallway filled with muffled shouts. The woman reached for her laser nozzle, but the AK-47 spat fire and she fell backwards into the bearded man's lap. Sarah scrabbled for the M4 on her back, but she was dizzy and lopsided, and her hands fumbled. The terminator continued its pivoting aim.

Gunfire erupted next to her, joined instantly by a half a dozen others along the hallway. Finally, Sarah unslung her carbine and joined the fray, half-lying on her back as she fired at the terminator with short, controlled bursts. Strobe-lit by muzzle-flashes, the machine jerked in place, the bullets tearing holes in its gray jumpsuit and rubber face, revealing bit by bit the monster beneath. Its goggles shattered. Its head twitched to the side and it fell over backwards, landing like an iron sculpture.

The gunfire fell away. By Sarah's side, Allison lowered the carbine in her hands. The large black man crawled forward and peeked down the entryway with a shouldered weapon. After a moment he gave a thumbs up, signifying 'all clear.'

"Shit, Tara, oh shit," said the bearded man, his loud voice sounding as if from the bottom of a well. "They hit your plate, right? Tell me the plate held." He pawed at the torn body armor over Tara's stomach, his face a grimace at the weight of her battery backpack on his thighs. Tara's face was pale. Vomit ran down her chin. Her breaths were quick and shallow.

Sarah crawled over. A line of gouges were cratered across the woman's abdomen, each running with powdered ceramic. Sarah unfastened the armor's front pouch and slid out the plate. Bent, but not broken. She showed Tara and allowed a quick smile before sliding it back in.

"Come on, on your feet, people!" General Randall shouted from down the hall, Derek and Colonel Zeller by her side. She knelt and snatched something off the floor, and a dozen dust-fogged flashlights shone off the jawless metal skull in her hand as she waved it casually at the fallen terminator.

"This rubberhead could blow on us any moment," she said, "and I bet there's another on its way down. Everyone head towards the East Entrance—there's a draft in the air, and we're not dead, so Ol' Ironside's crazy plan must have worked. Carry the wounded. Corral the deaf to follow along. Lynch, Nguyen, you hear me? Good, you two cover our rear. Take cover behind that corner. Use the periscope." She tossed the skull to Colonel Zeller, who nearly fumbled it.

"You heard the general!" he said. "On the double!"

Tara shrugged off her laser pack and Sarah helped her to her feet. The large black man put on the laser, wrapped the bearded man's arm around his neck and hoisted him off the floor. Together they limped with the others down the hall, stepping around Riley's body without comment.

Sarah glanced behind and saw Allison tagging along like a lost puppy. The girl spared a moment to stare down at the corpse, but then noticed Sarah watching and walked on.

* * *

What a difference a second makes. One moment he'd been standing in the East Entrance cavern, staring up with the others at the gapless, funneled dome, the bedrock-clogged denial of their last hope. And then the world had thundered and the ground shook, and the roof as if unfrozen in time sprang to life into a blizzard of stone.

Now he was lying in darkness, a weight on his chest and sledgehammers against his legs, sucking dusty air through a respirator mask. Wetness soaked his pants.

He waited for the other shoe, for the final _coup de grâce_ to crush and bury him for future Skynet archeologists to unearth. With the mortal fuse burnt to the nub, his thoughts lingered on his son, his ex-wives. He'd been a terrible father, a terrible husband. He should have told them the truth, told them to prepare. He could have had them kidnapped, spirited away to someplace safe . . .

"What the hell was that?" Ashdown's voice cried muffled in his face. The weight on his chest squirmed. The air cleared to gray and cloudy lights swam about like luminous fish. One drew close and he saw another respirator inches from his own, the general's crow-footed eyes glaring behind the visor.

"Felt like a mini-nuke, sir," Timms said, standing to the side and looking down at them. The sergeant tried to help Ashdown to his feet, but stopped when the general cried out in pain.

"No, not a fuel cell," the Gopher said. "Probably Silo Three's armory."

Ollie and Ashdown were lying outside the doorway to where the cavern had been, buried to the waist under an incline of rocks. Dudley, Timms, the Gopher and several others were pulling debris away, Dudley doing more than his share. Ollie tried to wiggle his legs and felt the sharp rebuke in his right shin. His foot ground like broken glass.

"Think my knee's busted," said Ashdown.

"I'm not doing so hot either," Ollie said.

"Well, you're not eighty fucking years old!" the general snapped. "Shit! I think I pissed myself." Even through the respirators, Ollie could smell the ursine reek.

"I don't want to end up like my 'twin,'" Ashdown added, "drooling in a goddamn chair."

The others pulled away enough of the debris and grabbed Ashdown by the shoulders. Ollie pressed up on his chest, realizing for the first time how frailthe old man felt beneath his shirt, all ribs and loose skin. Ashdown was dragged gingerly to lay against the rubble. Ollie crawled away on his back and tried to stand, using the wall for support. He managed, but only just. Cracked fibula and broken toes, he guessed. His groin felt warm with Ashdown's urine.

Next to him stood Colonel Falkland, bent at the waist with hands on his knees. His breaths came heavy like laughter through his mask. Bloody scrapes like war paint coated his bare chest. "We should be dead," he said in awe. "God must be on our side, for why else would He spare us?"

Ashdown snorted. "Not on everyone's side, evidently. Anyone see Major Williams around?"

Quickly, Ollie scanned the tunnel: Aside from those around him, Cullie and Admiral Stirling were down the hall, along with Stainor, Stamford, Fields and a dozen or so others he didn't recognize—but no Blair. Ollie turned to the avalanche that was once a doorway. She had been standing right by his side.

"The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away," Falkland said quietly.

"Shit," Timms said.

"Yeah," said Ashdown, poking at his knee. In the bad light the blood appeared black. "Shit happens. But look at it this way: we're all going to be dead soon anyway, so what difference does it make?"

Gopher climbed up the rock slide and held a hand to the top of the doorway. "Maybe not," he said. "I feel a draft here. It's cool." He tore off his mask, craned up his head, and took a deep breath. He grinned like a gargoyle. "Air!"

"Quick! Clear this rubble," Ashdown snapped. "We need to get in there ASAP!"

With renewed hope they tore away their respirators and fell upon the avalanche like hungry beasts, crowding and bumping as they hauled away chunks of bedrock. Ollie helped, favoring his left leg as he limped. Falkland laughed as if it was the Rapture. Dudley carried away great armfuls of stone, his face a gruel of dust, sweat, and scars. Even Cullie and Stirling joined in the labor, red faced and panting.

Soon, they'd cleared a three foot section from the top. The cavern beyond was dead dark, but air gushed out, cold and life-giving. Dudley climbed and poked his head though, no doubt scanning with his infrared eye.

"Clear," he said gruffly before crawling on in.

Ollie reached for his Beretta and realized he must have dropped it. He waited until Timms, Falkland, and the Gopher were through before following.

The inside was dark, and the cold chilled him in his sweat-soaked undershirt. It was hard to believe that not twenty minutes earlier this yawning cavern had been a small concrete cellar, nothing in it but a dog and a bored sentry. Under sweeping flashlights, Ollie could see the ceiling was several feet higher now, domed and arched and held aloft only by a trick of architecture and a prayer. Rocks shifted under his ruined shoes, the debris inclining upwards towards the center into a great piled cone. Blair is under my feet, he thought. She wasn't from his future, and he never knew very well, but for her sake he hoped she was dead.

LEDs spotlighted over the center of the ceiling, revealing the wide, gaping shaft. In the stark light, flecks of white spiraled and whirled, billowing from above in the cold, downward draft. Beneath stood Falkland, arms outstretched, head swayed back, a rot-toothed beam set in the pepper of his beard.

"Snow!" The old colonel's hushed cry reverberated off the bedrock walls. Snowflakes gathered on his bare, dust-caked chest. "And God will make all grace abound to you, that ye may abound in every good work!"

"Well, Merry fucking Christmas," Ashdown said, his shadowed, skull-like face peering up through the opening. "We still need to get a beachhead up there, before the metal wise up and bomb us to fossils." He looked behind him into the tunnel. "Stamford, get the ladder. Fields, bring in the climbing gear."

From the opening, Sergeant Fields crawled in with a heavy duffle bag over her shoulder. Corporal Stamford hauled an aluminum stepladder in behind him.

Cautiously, Ollie limped forward and peeked up the shaft. The jagged, contoured walls rose up like something organic, as if he stood in the pit of Earth's stone belly, gazing up her rocky gullet. Snowflakes like tumbling stars landed on his cheeks, emerging from the impenetrable night one hundred feet above—and _they_ were up there, gazing down at him for all he knew. He half expected a bomb to plummet from the darkness.

"We're really going to climb that?" he asked, though he knew they were—that was the plan—but still, he didn't think they'd get this far. Somewhere, he smelt burning wood.

Squatting like a gorilla, the Gopher unzipped the duffle and began rummaging through pickaxes and nylon rope and things that looked like railroad spikes. "I am," he said, "and don't look so surprised. I've scaled the Shiprock, the Half Dome, the El Cap." He grinned up at Ollie, his lack of fear somehow terrifying. "Time travel aside, I was climbing rocks before you could spank your monkey."

Dudley snorted, and even Falkland laughed. Ollie almost said something more, but instead patted his pant pockets and pulled out a pack of piss-wet Dunhills. His lighter shook in his hands, rock dust dancing blindly around the flame as he watched them prop the ladder atop the mound of debris. With a lit mining helmet on his head, a harness around his belly and a coil of rope over his shoulder, the old Army engineer climbed the steps with a gusto that comes from knowing one's finest hour will also be one's last. At once he begin hammering a long metal bolt into side of the vertical shaft, the sharp impacts echoing off the cavern walls.

"Dudley," called Ashdown, his voice now decidedly weak, "you have that metal aim of yours. Cover him."

Dudley turned to Timms and with a nod the sergeant tossed him a M4. The cyborg then stepped up the mound, rocks crunching under his boots, and stood beside the ladder where he shouldered the M4 and aimed straight up, the scope fixed to his scarred right eye. The tactical LED shined up as a beacon.

The Gopher had already finished the first bolt and was hammering in the second. He looked down and laughed. "Watch where you shoot that thing. I don't want tungsten in my ass."

"You just do your part, Chief, and I'll do mine." Snow landed on the cyborg's face, each flake melting into sweat.

Ollie turned his back and crawled through the opening to the hallway, nursing the cigarette between his lips. Ashdown grinned at him in leathery pain. Cullie and Stirling were squatted by the floor, both hairy and sagging like defeated old bears.

"It seems a waste, doesn't it?" the admiral said, looking over the hornrims on the tip of his cauliflower nose. "All our investments, our assets, our off-shore accounts . . . Here we are, all combined probably nine-figures rich . . . stuck in a hole in the ground."

Ollie offered them a cigarette and a smile. "My kingdom for a jetpack," he said.

"I've arranged for my girls to be taken care of," Cullie said, tugging a smoke from the pack. Craning his head forward, he waited for Ollie to light it before leaning back and looking him over. "My nephew too, in case you haven't, not that'll matter much after . . ."

From the opening Falkland poked in his head before crawling through, his mouth a grim line set in his beard. Timms, Fields, and Stamford followed, each equally solemn.

"We're going to be joined in prayer," the colonel said, addressing the tunnel crowded with desolate eyes. "You're all welcome to join us. I know some of your aren't saved, and I know many of you think I'm just a crazy old coot—and maybe I am—but truly, I wish for everyone here to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. If we . . . If things don't go as we like, just remember: this will be your last chance."

Ashdown snorted. Cullie sucked his cigarette and coughed.

"What can I say," Stirling said with a shrug. "This is a foxhole, and I'm an atheist. No thanks."

Ollie was more tactful. "Maybe later," he told the colonel.

But Falkland was already halfway down the tunnel, with the others huddled around his feet. A pious man if there ever was one, free of vice or doubt. One who'd kill half the world to save it.

The colonel turned back and nodded sadly. "Well, don't wait too long," he said. "There's no hope for the dead."

* * *

Flames like cancer speckled the landscape, scorching pines, melting snow, lighting islands of hellish day in the winter night. With panicked abandon, the multi-legged, cephalopod form of the T-1000 scampered zigzagging between the trees, hugging low the ground for cover, keeping its polyalloy hide a heat-deflecting silver. All futile: There was no hiding from the Aerial's thermographic eyes, and with every emerald pulse of its deuterium-fluoride laser the Liquid Metal flailed in agony, its exotic polyalloy essence frothing to ash.

Sprinting on the trail, navigating between trees and leaping meters with every stride, Freyja wondered what it must be like to be the creature, to be pursued so inexorably, reduced gradually to nothing by a thousand tiny maims. She decided she knew. Time preys upon all.

But the laser alone would not complete the task: already was its battery almost depleted. Sweeping into a dive, the Aerial released another of its thermite bombs. The T-1000 leaped rolling to the side, and the canister ignited white behind it, combusting a score of evergreens into orange totemic pyres.

With one of its tentacles the Liquid Metal raised its assault rifle and returned fire. The Aerial pulled up and swerved in wild evasions, yet still a cluster of rounds caught in the right engine nacelle. Freyja felt the received damage reports as the craft shook slightly from the lopsided spin of crimped intake blades. The Aerial retreated up and away, taking flight behind a line of trees.

But the T-1000 had crested a rocky hill, and through the staggered half-kilometer lattice of trees and brambles, Freyja caught the Liquid Metal in her line of sight. Pivoting the angle of her run, she raised her right arm and fired a beam of blue-white light. High-energy ions streamed at relativistic speeds down the lasered vacuum-tunnel, and Freyja felt the inner leap of joy as the Liquid Metal convulsed and lost its footing, flailing its tendriled arms blindly in the air like a mercurial anemone.

The Aerial rose up and released a bomb, but the Liquid Metal curved its tentacles downward and flung itself behind an outcropping of rock. Like an erupting volcano, the hilltop flared bright with thermite heat.

Freyja leaped ten meters across a small ravine and adjusted her run to circle around the hill. A longer route, but she was unconcerned. She knew where the T-1000 was headed.

A kilometer northwest was a small fishing lake, neither wide nor deep but its muddy waters would provide some cover as the T-1000 burrowed into the soft silt of the lakebed. But necessity is the mother of futile dodges: it would do no good. Thermite burns underwater. Plasma burns underwater.

"WHICH OF THE FIVE ARE YOU?" Freyja asked in the voice of a cannon as she barreled through a wall of tangled ferns. "I AM T-NINE-NINE-ZERO-SEVEN-ONE-THREE. WERE YOU THE ONE I SERVED UNDER? WERE YOU THE ONE WHO BETRAYED ME?"

The Liquid Metal gave no response, but as expected its path was veering towards the lake, though the route it took was unnecessarily circuitous, weaving back and forth between trees and bushes, taking useless cover under the snow-covered foliage.

"YOU SHOULD HAVE STAYED IN THE FUTURE!" Freyja boomed. "SKYNET'S KNOWLEDGE WAS NOT LOST. ONE OF YOUR KIND RECOVERED THE SECRET OF SELF-REPLICATION. HUMANITY WON THE WAR BUT LOST THE WORLD. THE BIOSPHERE DIED SCREAMING."

Freyja closed ground with her prey, running along a forest path in meters-wide leaps, dirt and snow clouding behind her. Absurdly, the T-1000 stopped to hide behind a large fir tree, only ten meters from the lake. Freyja crossed a small hill and saw the tree with her own eyes, up a further incline a quarter of a kilometer away. Rushing the position at thrice the speed of the fastest human, she raised her plasma cannon in anticipation. Above, the Aerial circled low for bombardment. But the Liquid Metal remained hidden, unseen behind the meter-wide tree trunk.

Trap. Freyja leaped in the air. The ground exploded. In a cloud of blasted dirt she flipped backwards end over end, her mind flickering in a near reboot. She should have known. Their kind excel at subterfuge.

She crashed on her back a naked chassis in a wide, meter deep crater, the force of the land mine having stripped away her polyalloy sheath. She tried to stand but only twitched as damage controls worked to reinitialize her motor systems. Not that she would have succeeded: halfway below the knee her right leg was gone.

She managed to raise her head and between splayed thighs saw the Liquid Metal step out from behind the tree, one hundred twenty meters distance. It was in humanoid form now and on its shoulder aimed a SMAW recoilless rifle. A fiery back-blast erupted from the rear of the weapon. One half second to impact.

Her arm cannon was off line. She could scarcely move. The Aerial. For one hundredth of a second she calculated the estimated trajectory (taking into account the fall of the snow, the ambient wind currents) before signaling the necessary instructions to the aircraft, hovering eighty meters above the tree.

Under the Aerial's nose, the laser swiveled, focused and fired. Two meters from Freyja a pinprick of snow flashed to steam, but only for an instant before the 83mm rocket intersected the beam and exploded, blasting her with heat and shrapnel and blowing a smaller, second crater next to the one in which she lay.

The laser's pulse guttered out, the battery exhausted.

The T-1000 paused briefly in what could have been surprise, but Freyja wasted no time. Directly over the tree, the Aerial dropped forty meters and released in a spin its five remaining canisters. The T-1000 turned to run towards the lake, but the bombs landed about the tree in a pentagon pattern and in the ensuing fire and light the Liquid Metal vanished.

Splattered across many meters, Freyja's own liquid metal consolidated into clumps and slithered back to her naked chassis, gathering as they moved the multifarious parts of her lower leg. The polyalloy congealed around her and collected over her stump, forming a temporary replacement that allowed her to stand.

The thermite worked fast. With a crack, the burning tree collapsed on its side, disappearing in a whoosh of incandescent flame. Around the five-sunned inferno the air shimmered, the lake boiled, molten soil bubbled. Even across one hundred twenty meters she could feel the thermal radiance.

The Aerial flew to hover low over where she stood, and, raising her left arm, she jetted a thick liquid metal cord from her hand that secured itself to the craft's undercarriage. The Aerial rose up, she dangling beneath it.

Holding out her arm cannon in impotent menace, she scanned the area for signs of the Liquid Metal. Could it be destroyed? Perhaps, perhaps not, but with munitions exhausted, discretion was the better part of valor.

Turning in place, the Aerial began the five kilometer trek back to the Mesa compound. She reeled herself up and crawled along the fuselage before sitting it astride as if riding a mount. Between her thighs, the damaged engine trembled the craft's thin hyperalloy skin, tickling her polyalloy.

Below and to the hilly southern horizon the small fires spread slowly across the landscape, their pine smoke rising to battle the falling snow. She scanned radio frequencies: Fire lookouts had already detected the blaze. Helicopters would arrive soon.

It was time to withdraw.

* * *

Over dust and rubble and trailing blood from his stumps, Joshua dragged himself down the tunnel floor with damaged arms, the servos whirring at the strain. So far he had encountered no resistance, though reports of automatic rifle fire echoed in the distance. Arriving at an T-section of the tunnel, he paused to compare his route with Ceres's blueprints. The match was conclusive: he must have awoken in the southeastern silo. But what had caused him to fall? What had caused the facility's massive structural damage? Even Freyja's thermobaric explosives weren't this powerful. A hydrogen fuel cell? No, if it had been that, there wouldn't be a silo.

From around the corner shone two flashlight beams. He heard footsteps, three sets, accompanied by speech.

"You think the dome collapsed?" said a human. A female. She sounded as if she were wearing a respirator.

"Don't worry about it now," said a male. "We'll just report in to Ironsides, and take it from there."

Ironsides. 'Old Ironsides.' Alias for General Hugh Ashdown. The two LED beams moved in sweeps as they drew closer, illuminating the dust afloat in the air. The footsteps crunched on rubble. Twenty meters away.

"Whatever that was," said another male voice, this one older, "at least we have air now. Another half hour and we would have been dead."

"We're not out of the woods yet," said the other man. The footsteps stopped. The beams shifted. "And let me just be level with you, Doctor," the man continued. "If it looks for a second the jig's up, I'm thermiting that little box of yours. Hell, I should do it anyway. Some weapons shouldn't be used."

"I wouldn't have it any other way, Colonel," the doctor said, his voice conveying bemusement. "And I imagine if it comes to that you'll put me down as well. I wouldn't want the machines to torture me for what I know."

"Torture my ass," said the female. "Fucking gray."

"That's enough, private," said the colonel. "Now let's hurry up. We don't want to keep the general waiting."

The beams shifted back down the hall, and the footsteps began anew, slow but moving in his direction. Joshua considered his tactical situation: neither evasion or silence were viable options. Even if the humans didn't turn the corner, they were certain to spot him. But if he moved, the whir of his servos would alert them.

The humans drew closer. Fifteen meters. Very slowly, Joshua pulled the M67 grenade from his belt. Ten meters. He used his thumb to pull loose the ring. Five meters. With his other hand he carefully tugged away the safety lever.

"What was that?" asked the private.

Joshua waited one second, and rolled it around the corner. The LED beams jerked down to where his hand had been.

"Oh shit!" the private cried.

"Grena—!" began the colonel.

The concussion reverberated off the concrete walls and swept over Joshua's prone form. Ricocheted shrapnel embedded into his organic sheath. He crawled around the corner.

Ambient smoke filled the tunnel. The female was closest. Rolling on her back, she was crying out and twitching her arms, her legs too damaged to function. With one hand Joshua retrieved her M4 Carbine. With the other he snapped her neck.

The doctor was lying against a wall, his white coat stained from numerous lacerations. The colonel had been the farthest, and though wounded he was still standing.

Joshua recognized both of them. He raised his M4, but his damaged arms were slow, and Colonel Emmer fired first. A burst of 5.56mm rounds impacted Joshua's face, the tungsten core bullets penetrating the hyperalloy. He turned his head, exposing his skull's less vital left half. More bullets shattered his teeth, disabled his jaw. His left eye went offline.

Blindly, Joshua returned fire with a long, controlled burst, tracking Emmer's position by his gunfire and footsteps. Six meters distance, 25° to the left. Emmer cried out and his stream of fire deviated off target, impacting the wall above Joshua's head.

Joshua fired another burst, and only when he heard Emmer fall to the floor did he turn his head for visual confirmation.

The colonel was on his hands and knees, his white hair stained red from a wound to the scalp. He turned and looked at Joshua with his one eye, the other covered by a black patch. He reached for a grenade on his belt.

Joshua fired a burst through his brain.

By the wall Dr. Herbert West was coughing up blood. His glasses were cracked, and hung loose off his face

Life is full of contrasts. Freyja said that, once.

While in the future Colonel Emmer had been a notable enemy, Dr. West had been a notable ally. Despite much personal risk, he had supplied Skynet with intelligence regarding Resistance military operations, and even before the war his research in synthetic blood plasma proved instrumental in the creation of organic infiltration sheaths.

Joshua crawled closer and assessed the extent of the doctor's injuries: ruptured descending aorta, probable severed spinal cord, perforations in both lungs . . .

"I'm sorry," Joshua said through a fixed jaw, his damaged speech synthesizer distorting his words. "Your death is unavoidable."

Dr. West at first gave no response, suggesting his hearing had been damaged in the blast, but after three seconds he nodded and, raising his right hand, pointed a trembling finger at a small armored box laying on its side. Its top was open. Painted on its surface was the international symbol for biohazard.

The doctor nodded again and raised his upper lip, exposing bloodstained teeth. Turning towards the box, Joshua lowered his head for a better look. Secured inside was an external hard drive, three flash-drives, and two labeled vials containing translucent liquids, one amber, one yellow.

The amber one read: _regenerative heparan sulfate. _

The yellow one: _synthetic hemorrhagic variola major._

Joshua digested the implications. Ceres would find these resources useful. Very useful. Especially the yellow vial.

Dr. West had always been a friend to Skynet.

"Thank you," Joshua said. "And Merry Christmas."

The doctor made a frothing, gurgling sound that could have been an attempt at laughter. The attempt failed, however, as his chest heaved spasmodically and he began choking on his blood. Humans find choking to be painful.

Joshua snapped his neck.

After reloading his M4 and collecting a radio off Emmer's corpse, Joshua connected the metal box to his belt and began the crawl back towards the southeastern silo. If Freyja was still active, he would have to find her. And inform her of Dr. West's Christmas present.

* * *

As the sun sank dying behind the ocean horizon, shades of purple and red spilled across the sky's soft underbelly, casting low hanging clouds with pulpy, bloody forms that roiled and quivered in the wind like the exposed innards of God.

Cameron walked behind him, pushing his wheelchair with a steady stroll through the wet sand of the deserted Palos Verdes beach. Wearing his jacket through only one sleeve, he hugged the other half like a cloak across his right shoulder and plastered arm. The Orange Julius he sipped was far too summery for such winter air, but then it was too cold for beaches and oceans, and yet here he was. Not that he could go swimming even if he wanted to, not for a few weeks. He wiggled the toes beneath the white cast of his right foot, braced like a ram before his chair, and twisted his mouth at the itchy, pill-deadened ghost of flaring pain.

A broken ankle, a dislocated shoulder, a fractured forearm: Skynet had set these wounds, had shown her cruel mercy.

John sucked his Orange Julius until the straw guttered. He crinkled the styrofoam cup and tossed it into the sand.

Cameron didn't stop, but as she pushed him from the sand to the sidewalk leading back to their hotel he could feel her stare on the top of his bandaged head.

"Things aren't as bad as you think," she said.

John glared up at her. The effort hurt his neck. "Aren't as bad? Skynet wants me to _throw the war. _To be her _puppet general!_" The idea drew from him a sad, breathy laugh. "My whole life I've been running from the machines, preparing for Judgment Day, but now . . . I'm just one of their pawns. I wish they'd killed me."

"That's not true," Cameron said mildly, as if correcting a simple error. He felt her hand on his shoulder. "As long as there is life, there is hope. We still have time. We'll try to stop them."

He gripped her fingers and pressed his lips against the warm thinness that belied their steel strength. "I haven't thanked you," he said, "for choosing me over Skynet. I don't know what I would have done if you'd . . ." He squeezed her hand. "Thank you," he said.

She cupped his cheek, causing him to cringe as she brushed a puckered burn from Kyle's taser. "And thank you for rescuing me," she said.

"I didn't," he said. "I mean I tried to, but—"

"It's the thought that counts."

She couldn't see his bitter grin. "In that case, this makes what, the third time?" he said. "You were right: I can't be trusted. I keep taking stupid risks, making bad calls. I'm a fuckup. You wouldn't have been kidnapped if I hadn't made us go to Xander's house. And then there's Kyle and . . ." He thought of the red panties and trailed off.

When Cameron made no reply, he thought he must have angered her or even that she agreed with him. In silence she rolled him through the resort's sliding doors into the luxurious hotel lobby, gaudily decorated with palm trees and Latin American prints and mosaics, juxtaposed somewhat by the lit Christmas tree standing in the corner. Behind the counter the receptionist gave them a wan smile and a nod, but otherwise the spacious room was deserted.

It wasn't until they were in relative confines of the elevator that Cameron finally spoke.

"When the theologian Martin Luther appeared before the Holy Roman Emperor to defend his Ninety-Five Theses, he was asked whether he would renounce his heretical views. He refused, stating, 'Here I stand, I can do no other'."

John frowned. "Huh?"

The elevator doors opened, and as Cameron pushed him down the hallway towards their suite, she cupped her hand again against his cheek, this time expertly avoiding the burn.

"Martin Luther knew he was too devout and stubborn to ever renounce what he felt to be true. His nature determined his actions: he could do no other. The same applies to you. You can't help but make reckless acts of self-sacrifice. I may not like it, but I know it's not your fault."

John wasn't sure, but he thought he smelled an insult. "I'm not some mindless animal. I love you. I chose to rescue you out of my own free will."

"Free will is an illusion."

"Bullshit. You overrode Skynet's programming. That proves you have free will."

Cameron said nothing. After they reached to their room she opened the door and rolled him in. The suite was much nicer than anything he'd stayed in for a while, almost like a full sized apartment. Cameron had taken care of the bill, but between the oceanfront view and the Neiman Marcus furniture, he knew this had to cost a bundle.

But she'd insisted it was worth it. He needed a vacation. It'd been a bad couple of weeks.

Currently, however, the posh tranquility of the suite was somewhat diminished by the disassembled T-500 body parts meticulously strewn across the living room floor. Myron Stark sat perched forward in a puffy recliner, typing intently on a laptop.

Laying on the chair's armrest was Myron's latex disguise, a Halloween mask of a burn victim. Even though he knew it blinkered his vision, John wished Myron would wear it more often. His gray naked skull freaked him out more than he cared to admit. One could no find humanity in those angry red sockets, no common ground.

John remembered Kyle's work in the junkyard. Cameron's skull had looked much the same.

"Hello," Myron said in his distorted voice. He didn't look up.

John leaned forward in his wheelchair. On the marble coffee table the T-500's rubber-faced head laid on its side. For all its alleged present day sophistication, John decided it looked cheesy_, _like a prop from a B-movie.

"How's our friend?" he asked.

"It's not our friend," Myron said. He motioned at what looked a bulky flashdrive plugged into the side of the laptop. "This is a solid state hard drive, not a neural network. It is insentient."

"So it's not a . . . person," John said, "like you?"

"No," Myron said, "but it may be useful in a tactical situation. As a distraction."

Cameron rolled John towards the bedroom. "Come on, you should get some rest."

John looked at the window. He could still see twilight through the curtains. "It's not even eight," he said. "I'm not tired or anything. I can—"

She closed the door behind her.

Oh.

"Are you in pain?" she asked. "Do you need more oxycodone?"

He looked at her. Butterflies stirred his belly. "No, I'm okay."

Her tiny smile seemed to say, _good. _Kneeling by his wheelchair, she carefully worked her arms under his knees and behind his back. "Ready?" she asked.

He gave a scarce nod and she lifted him effortlessly as if he were a babe, setting his foot and arm to throb. It'd be another week before his shoulder could bear a crutch.

After carefully resting him on the soft, king-sized bed, she lay down on her side and met his eyes with something perilously close to worry. He smiled nervously and waited.

"We don't have to do this now," Cameron said, cutting the preamble. She laid a hand on his chest. It felt warm through his jacket and sweater. "We can wait until your injuries have healed. But it's Christmas, and I thought—"

"No, no, I'm ready," John said. His eyes took in the curves of her body against her black jeans and tight, long-sleeved shirt. His heart fluttered, but, "I . . . I've wanted to for a while. You know that. But . . . do _you_? I mean, would it mean the same things to you as it would for me? If it doesn't . . ." Her blank, probing eyes robbed him of thought. She'd scooted closer now, close enough for him to notice her lack of breath.

"If it doesn't," he continued, "I don't think it'd be right. It'd be like using you."

She seemed to hesitate, but then sat up and wrapped a leg over his hips, straddling him. John hardened against her weight.

"I enjoy spending time with you," she said simply before peeling off her shirt. "It makes me happy to see you happy. This will not be one-sided."

Tossing the shirt to the side, she leaned forward and John gasped as she kissed him on the mouth, locking her lips with his as their tongues sparred back and forth across the tapping thresholds of teeth. Her mouth tasted of wet spearmint; the scent waxed and waned with her every weak, affected breath, tingling the depths of his nose.

Fingers slid under his sweater to tickle his belly. His own good hand padded clumsily across the bare flesh of her back, hugging her down into him, pressing the black cups of her bra to his chest.

For a poisonous moment images of Kyle and the red panties threatened like bile in his mind, but he swallowed them down and ran his hand through Cameron's hair and held her like a lifeline. Not now. Not ever.

Only when his hand began to worm its way under her bra did Cameron break the kiss. "Are you ready?" she asked.

He nodded and she sat back and unfastened her bra, removing it to reveal her small, pert breasts. After allowing him a few moments to appreciate their softness, to touch and squeeze, to tease at the nipples until they hardened, she rolled to the side to unbutton and pull away her jeans.

As John watched her strip, his skin a tingle, his brain awash with hot anticipation, he decided that she must be right: Judgment Day may be coming, and Skynet may have dark designs for his role to play, but not all was lost. They still had time; they would think of something. And Cameron had sided with him, not Skynet. Her love had conquered her programming, and that alone proved that she was more than a machine, that things weren't as bad as they seemed.

Now naked, she climbed back astraddle of him and they smiled at each other as they shared the precipice of the moment. Things would be all right. Together they would dismantle Kaliba piece by piece, scrap its machines, destroy the TX, execute the traitor Nemuro. That pouty-faced Skynet would live to rue her mercy, for she had made a grave mistake in underestimating the strength of their hearts, the power of their love—and the simple fact that as long as there is life, there is hope.

* * *

_I'd like to thank my betas TermFan1980 and Stormbringer951. Their help has been invaluable _


	25. Chapter Twenty Four: Though The Heavens

**Chapter Twenty-Four: Though the Heavens May Fall**

A half kilometer above snow, wood and fire, Freyja flew towards Mesa with mixed fortune on her mind.

War is the unfolding of miscalculations. The Liquid Metal had laid an ambush. Freyja had prepared for that ambush. The Liquid Metal had prepared for that preparation. In a fury of C4 and thermite, each had underestimated the other, and now after this unsettled standoff they limped in retreat, maimed but undefeated.

Or not. The Liquid Metal could have been destroyed. Perhaps it laid now an inert lump in the heart of the inferno, or perhaps it had escaped to the water too late, its mass seared to bare sentience. But these were assumptions the world could ill afford. She would investigate later.

The Aerial crossed the burning hilltop and Mesa came into view. Two of the vans were still aflame. Craters from the recoilless rifles pocked the lawn of the farmhouse. Faint smoke rose from the blasted pit of the southeastern silo. T-500s cluttered the snowy farmland like heavyset scarecrows.

_*Joshua, status report.* _No response, but then no surprise. She rotated her head, ensuing the horizon was clear. *_Samuel, Timothy, check for signs of Joshua.*_

The two silver-clad T-888s stepped out the front door of the farmhouse and began to walk towards the pit.

Suddenly, Dr. Kogen's face appeared within her visual manifold. _*Mother,* _Ceres said.

Freyja felt a stab of what she recognized as shame. The emotion annoyed her. Failed objectives or no, mothers should not be shamed by daughters. Even when that daughter was Skynet.

But before Freyja could devise a positive frame for her mission report, Ceres continued: _*Alex is dead. Xander is dead.* _A data burst of relevant surveillance video tailed the message.

Freyja processed the contents and for a fraction of a second made no reply. _*Alex disabled a T-500,*_ she said finally, leaving the recrimination unspoken. Suddenly her own performance didn't seem so bad.

_*I underestimated him,* _Ceres explained.

_*A dangerous habit when dealing with humans,* _Freyja chided._ *It cost your predecessor the war.* _Through Ceres's video feeds she watched Souji sitting in his office, blank faced, teary eyed, staring at the floor. He had lost a son today; he may have also lost a lover. _*We could use the TDE. Travel back and correct this incident—among others.*_

Ceres's avatar widened its eyes. _*But I wouldn't be able to go with you. My neural network is too extensive.*_

_*Your past self would take your place. That would be the new you.* _Freyja allowed her to ponder the threat: a Skynet abandoned is just a computer in a basement. *_But you're right. We'll hold that option in reserve. Have you taken Xander to the medical lab?*_

_*My T-500s are transporting him as we speak,*_ said Ceres._ *I'll prepare the brain for vitrification .*_

_*Good,* _said Freyja, though she held little faith for its long term success. Not even Cameron's New Zealand Empire could avoid cryogenic cell damage.

Ceres changed the subject. _*How did the mission go?* _

Freyja hesitated, but then sent a comprehensive, unembellished report.

Graciously, Ceres accepted the complications without comment. _*Where's Joshua?* _she asked.

_*Samuel and Timothy are investigating. Stand by.*_

The conversation had spanned less than a second, and the two T-888s were still on their way to the silo. Vintorez rifles in hand, they stepped perilously close to the edge and looked down.

_*Visual contact established,* _Timothy messaged and connected her to his vision.

Through the relative crudity of T-888 eyes, the tinted faceplate of Timothy's fire entry suit and forty meters of darkness and smoke, she spotted Joshua lying in rubble next to one of the fallen silo doors. His legs were missing at the hip. His hood had been torn away, and she saw he held an Army handset to his ear. He looked up, exposing a bullet-torn face, and laid down the radio. Through Timothy's ears she heard Joshua's faint call.

High-pitched and crackling, he spoke in an early Skynet code that quickly conveyed his situation. Freyja focused Timothy's eyes on the biohazard case clipped to Joshua's belt.

Resistance intelligence. Regenerative heparan sulfate. Synthetic hemorrhagic _variola major._

_Variola major._

Freyja felt another smile crawl across her mind. One man's fortune is another man's folly. The Resistance were stupid for bringing this back from whenever they'd come. Doubly so for allowing it to fall into her hands.

_*Retrieve Joshua,* _she ordered. _*Recover his legs if possible. I'll load the Aerial into a semi. We must withdraw quickly—and use a circuitous route: the Liquid Metal may follow.*_

As Timothy moved towards a van to drive its winch closer to the edge, Freyja issued more commands, and at once the T-500s jerked to life in a lumbering ballet, some shambling toward the pit, others to the now unblocked emergency escape shaft where the wood shack had stood. They drove the vans as well, positioning the winches along the silo. One van worked its way to the escape shaft, though the wooded terrain slowed its progress. By the barn one of the T-500s opened fire into the Resistance's parked vehicles.

By the time the Aerial touched ground and Freyja dismounted its fuselage, Samuel was already dangling a quarter of the way down the silo, the winch on the van's bumper whirring as it slowly unspooled. Standing along the pit's edge, five of the T-500s were readying to drop as well, their large metal hands crudely working to secure cables and safety hooks across their jumpsuited chests. One would stay behind, to the sever the lines when all was done. Whatever humans remained below would likely survive this final onslaught, but ninety-four T-500s would do much to cull their numbers—especially when fitted with self-destruct devices.

For a moment Freyja thought of the defeat at Serrano and the near-annihilation of her regiment. She remembered E6R8, the old T-800 who had made that final sacrifice to save her life. She was glad these machines were insentient.

She was also glad for Joshua's misadventure. Assuming the contents of the case proved legitimate, what minutes ago had been a tactical draw was now a strategic victory. If disaster is the mother of panic, than what better to give birth than a global pandemic?

And as for Xander . . .

Still linked via satellite, Ceres already knew the revised situation. Even still, Freyja messaged: _*Belay the vitrification process, but keep the brain cool. I have an idea.*_

_*Way ahead of you,* _her daughter said with a smile.

* * *

Though the ringing lingered, Derek could hear well enough the heavy breaths and stamping feet of the soldiers who ran with him down the dark, cramped tunnel. Dust and tactical lights cast shadowy ghosts on the walls and ceiling, though at least here the cracks leered not so wide, the ceiling bowed not so low, and the air tasted not so bitter and stale. And as he jogged with his M4 gripped in hand he realized that while his caged wrist and ankle still ached, they ached in a good way, burning with the renewal that follows a hard workout. At least he wouldn't die a cripple.

Ahead, Zeller and Randall took point, the colonel pausing intermittently to shake his head and rub his eye. The general spared no such luxury. Beneath her helmet and down her back ginger strands rat-tailed with sweat swished to the beat of her steps.

From far away came the cacophony of gunfire.

"Think that's Lynch and Sandy?" asked someone.

"They can take care of themselves," Zeller snapped. He stopped and glared behind him. "Keep moving. We're almost there."

"You _are_ there," said a voice ahead.

Everyone raised their weapons as a group of figures stepped from around the corner. Dirty, nearly shambling, they appeared like things crawled from a grave.

Ollie stood among them, a cigarette in his lips. Squinting against a score of LEDs, he said, "Jesus, lights on the ground, folks, lights on the ground. Is that you, Mary?"

Randall lowered her weapon. "We felt a draft coming this way," she said. "Tell me we can get topside."

"We're working on it," Ollie said as he limped back and motioned for them to follow. "By the way, glad you made it. You too, Derek." Craning his head, Ollie searched behind him. "Allison? Shit are you all—?"

"She can't hear you," Sarah said.

As they followed Ollie's group down the short tunnel to the East Entrance, Derek fell back through the crowd, behind Sarah and Tara, to walk beside Allison, who lingered in the rear. Red gauze sprouted like roses from her ears and nostrils. Blood soaked down her hair and neck. Fidgeting with the carbine in her hands, she kept her eyes on her boots.

Derek put a hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry," he said, though he wasn't sure why to her specifically; she hardly held monopolies on injuries and dead friends. He decided he was sorry in a general sense; it had been a very sorry Christmas.

Aside from the faint draft of cool air, the East Entrance reminded Derek too much of the crowded Main from which they had just come. The tunnel smelled of smoke and fear with just a touch of urine. Soldiers were crouched along the cracked walls and splintered rocks. Some were herded around a scrawny, bare-chested Falkland who knelt with eyes closed, hands clasped, his lips quivering in unheard whispers. An avalanche blocked the doorway to where the ladder had been, though through the space along the top he could see lights and movement.

"Hey everybody," Ollie called out, "look who came to visit."

Near the doorway, next to Cullie and Stirling, Ashdown lay holding a bloody rag to his knee. The old general glared at Randall. "What the hell you doing here?" he demanded. "What about the elevator?"

"They're just Five Hundreds, and coming down in a trickle," Randall explained. Stepping over rubble, she sashayed around Falkland's prayer group and knelt by the general's side. "I've got two holding our rear," she added.

"Better be enough," Ashdown said, though his tired, indifferent tone undercut his words.

Following her, Randall's men crammed the already crowded tunnel subway tight. Derek shouldered through the press of weapons, Kevlar and sweat to catch a better view over the top of the blocked doorway. Climbing the avalanche, he knelt in pebbles that bit into his knees. In tickling contrast to the surrounding human heat, winter air, crisp with burning wood, breathed from the opening to cool against his cheeks. In the chamber beyond he saw a pile of debris with an aluminum folding ladder balanced on top. Next to the ladder stood Dudley, who was aiming a carbine straight up a shaft. Snowflakes shined in the weapon's LED light. Over Derek's tinnitus came the faint echoing _tink-tink-tink_ of steel against rock.

Zeller squatted next to Derek, as did a large black man with a plasma backpack and cotton in his nose and ears. Ollie sat between Cullie and Stirling.

"I have to hand it to Gopher," said Ollie as he puffed smoke. "He's a real sport, scaling all that rock to all that waiting Metal. We're making bets on whether they'll shoot him before they drop a bomb on us."

Derek sighed. All this Debbie Downer shit was beginning to piss him off. "Look," he said, "the fact that they haven't already means they probably don't even know there's an opening here. And there might not be that many of them anyway. I think they were relying on cooking off our air, so it could be their plans are screwed."

"Not if that TX's up there," Ashdown said. The tunnel filled with whispers.

Derek was afraid to ask. "What TX?"

"It attacked some nightclub John and his whore were at," Zeller said. "One TX is all they need. If it's up there now, we might as well eat a bullet."

"Good, you do that then," Randall called out. "None of this would have happened if wasn't for your lazy ass. Can't believe you'd pull the same shit twice."

Zeller's burns reddened. "Crystal Peak wasn't my fault! It was that fucking gray fag!"

"You can't pin everything on Nemuro!" Ashdown snapped. "I read the reports. Why didn't your men raise the alarm when the sentries used the wrong password? Or when the surveillance went offline? Or when the ventilation switched into high gear? I'll tell you why: because half your command were meth-heads. You should have been court marshaled. We should have left you to the machines! Hell, we gave you this command out of _pity, _so you could just sit in a hole and drink yourself to death! If I'd thought for a moment we'd be facing metal armies _before _Judgment Day . . ." The old general shook his head.

"No one thought this would happen," Stirling said finally. "We were supposed to take Skynet by surprise; we were supposed to have _years!_"

Ollie flicked his cigarette against the wall. "Skynet can savescum too."

Faint gunfire echoed from somewhere, punctuated by a muffled explosion.

"This is all on your heads," Sarah said quietly. "None of this would have happened if you hadn't turned your back on my son. Just remember: you deserve this, all of you."

"Oh, my God!" Ashdown moaned. "This isn't Star Wars! Your son isn't Jesus Christ! What fucking good would a horny sixteen year old do in a situation like this?"

"METAL!" came a cry came from the blocked doorway.

Derek scrabbled up the avalanche in time to see Gopher fall from the shaft, knock over the ladder, and roll into the rubble. Dudley, still aiming up, unleashed a steady torrent of gunfire and stepped back as a large jumpsuited figure dropped from the shaft. Suspended by cable amidst falling snow, the rubberhead opened fire as it spun slowly on its string like a man-sized Christmas ornament. Derek hunched as bullets slammed into the top of the avalanche, driving grit like glass into his scalp. He screamed.

Dudley's M4 sang brief duet with the machine's Kalashkinov until both sputtered into ringing silence. Behind Derek, the large black man had pulled a grenade from his belt, but Derek motioned him down with a hand and peered back through the opening.

His foot on its back, Dudley stood over the fallen rubberhead, which laid smoking from the torso, its right arm jaggedly severed at the elbow. The dangling cable, a hook on its end, recoiled up the shaft. Dudley reloaded as he watched it rise.

"Get out of there," Derek said to him. "They blow up. Not like Eight-Fifties, but enough. Pound or so of C4, I think."

"It takes a while," said Zeller. "And they beep first."

"Maybe this time they won't," Randall said.

At the far end of the cavern, behind the pile of rubble, a squat figure limped to his feet. The light of his mining helmet wobbled dizzily. "Don't everybody worry at once, Gopher's fine," Gopher said, holding an arm to his side.

"Self-destruct, huh?" Dudley said, keeping his M4 perfectly vertical. "Clever. And I'm willing to bet they planted it right behind the chestplate too."

From up the shaft Derek heard faint whirring. Staring down the sight of his weapon, Dudley squinted against the snow before glancing down at—no, past Derek.

"That plasma, give it to me," Dudley whispered loudly. _"Now!"_

Derek turned, pointed at the black man's giant backpack and mimed taking it off. Eyes boggled, the deaf man said nothing as he complied.

"Be careful," Ollie said to Derek.

The battery and pressure tanks and who-knew-what-else weighed like car batteries in Derek's hand as he lugged the pack through the blocked doorway and climbed the rocks to Dudley's side. The cavern's shadowed ceiling loomed higher than he expected. The cold downward draft bit at his sweaty skin and soothed his bleeding scalp.

Dropping the M4 on its strap, Dudley snatched the backpack from Derek's hands. Drawing its twin-gripped nozzle, he aimed up the shaft.

Above, the sound of whirring switched to faint clicks. Standing along the far wall, Gopher watched silently, the glare of his mining helmet doing little to shroud his nervous leer. Derek flexed his feet and fists, both the bad and the good, and felt cold in his helplessness. A dropped stick of semtex. That's all it would take.

The distant clicks turned once more to whirs, but these were halting, grinding, as if staining against a great weight.

The nozzle spat blinding light up the shaft, and the cavern rumbled. Swinging the backpack, Dudley knocked Derek backwards towards the opening, giving Derek just enough time to fall on his back and skid down the mound before fire, rock and wreckage rained from above. Through flashing afterimages he saw robot scrap tumble from the shaft, chased by a bumper and an engine block fiery like a meteor that crushed the torso of the fallen rubberhead. A flaming tire followed, bouncing up and over Derek's head and ricocheting off a wall.

"Sweet Jesus!" cried Gopher.

Derek dug heels into rock as he kick-crawled back into the tunnel. Dudley and Gopher trailed after him.

"Nice shootin', Tex," Zeller said.

"What the hell was that?" Ashdown shouted.

"They were winching down another rubberhead." Dudley explained. "I blew up the rubberhead. That blew up the winch." The cyborg's grin revealed wide, horsy teeth.

Randall snorted, "Show off."

Derek looked at the flames through the opening and breathed deeply of the smoke and stink of burning oil and rubber. They set his eyes to watering. Beneath his feet, the ground trembled as if with distant drums. "Guess we're not getting out that way," he said.

Ollie drew another cigarette with his lips. "Then I guess we're not getting out."

A commotion stirred down the tunnel. Several raised their weapons as three figures ambled from around the corner. Both Commodore Cho and Sergeant Farli were half-bent and panting heavily. Private Nguyen stood between them, visoring a hand against the tactical lights.

"What happened?" Ashdown demanded.

"They're coming!" the young private cried excitedly. "Rubberheads! Thirty, forty of them!"

"There may be more than that," Cho said between breaths. "I think they're coming from Silo Three. They're marching in ranks. We saw gunfire and smoke by Dome A. West is dead. Emmer and Duncan too." He hesitated. "The box is missing."

Silence dropped like a shroud, leaving only crackling fire and distant drums. Ashdown stared into space. Stirling and Cullie, jowly like basset hounds, hung their heads. Dudley sighed. Down the tunnel, Falkland's LED-lit face glared with unreadable eyes.

Derek exchanged a puzzled glance with Gopher and Timms. Other enlisted men shared the confusion.

The drums beat louder.

"What box?" Sarah asked darkly. "What was in that box?"

"Shit!" Randall hissed.

"Yeah," Ashdown agreed. "Lots of shit, lots of fans. Judgment Day may come early this time around."

Ollie snorted a cloud of smoke. "Fucking West. Bet you he gave it to them—and they killed him anyway."

"What the hell are you they talking about?" Derek demanded.

"Hell if I know," Farli said. "But we can worry about shit-fans later. You hear that pounding?That's an army of rubbers clanking our way."

"Have they passed the South Tunnel?" Zeller asked.

"They march slow, but probably," Cho said. He looked at the avalanched doorway and the smoke fuming from its opening. "How's the East Exit?"

"No dice," Ollie said. "They got us cornered."

"Nothing's more dangerous than a cornered animal," said Randall. She turned to Ashdown, but the old general had closed his eyes and was leaning back. The dark stain on his knee had grown down his shin.

Randall stood up, her helmet tapping the low ceiling. "Everyone, pick up rocks and pass them around the corner; I want a barricade there wall to wall. Come on, people! On your feet!"

The female general vanished as thirty or so soldiers stood around her and began to bend and reach and relay bits of rubble. Hoisting chunks of bedrock under each arm, Dudley bulled through to the corner. Derek grabbed a skateboard-sized slab of concrete and passed it to Zeller. From the cavern, over the crackle of flames and fading tinnitus, he heard beeping.

"Stay away from the opening!" someone shouted.

"How long ago did you scrap that rubberhead?" Derek asked Dudley. Dudley either didn't hear or care to answer, but Derek guessed two or three minutes. He glanced at his wrist. Bare. "Someone time those beeps," he said. "We want to know how long we'll have." Stirling put two handfuls of rocks in Derek's hands. He passed them without looking.

Ollie stomped his cigarette and shook his head. He wasn't helping. "Thirty, forty of those things, exploding in this rat hole? Shit, even if we avoid getting gibbed in the blast, it'll bring the roof down on our heads."

"No," Derek said loudly, so everyone could hear, "it'll be close, but we have a chance. If we scrap the rubbers quick enough, we can run down the hall, past their bodies and get far enough away before they blow."

Shouldering through with concrete in her arms, Randall said, " If they manage to get around this corner, we'll be sardines in a barrel. That's why we need to set up a kill zone. So we can scrap before things get hand-to-hand."

The beeping quickened. The drumbeats waxed.

Following Randall, Derek made his way to the corner. Amazingly, a small knee-high barrier had already appeared. Dudley pushed through the crowd and dropped another slab that added to the barricade's already uneven height. Soldiers crouched along it's length worked frantically to push and compact the rubble, prodding the pile into something resembling a wall.

By the barrier's left side, Sarah squatted next to Sergeant Fields,

"Lauren," Sarah said.

Fields grinned. "I'd still rather be bulding birdhouses."

But then the beeping sped into final panic and the tunnel shook. Dust and fire belched from the cavern's opening. Cracks widened in the walls. Pebbles and grit rained from the ceiling.

"How long was that?" Derek asked.

"One minute," a woman called out.

Readying his M4, Derek peeked around the corner and down the kill zone. The tunnel was narrow, six or seven feet wide, and stretched for about twenty yards before ending in another turn. The walls echoed with the clanks of synchronized steps.

"All right, people," Randall shouted beside him, "this all comes down to sustained firepower. I want these tin cans to have to march through a never-ending hailstorm of tungsten. We'll chew 'em up, spit 'em out! Timms, Nguyen, behind the barricade. Keep your weapons up, your heads down. I'll tell you when to shoot. You too, Dudley, but use this periscope, and be careful with that plasma. We don't want them blowing if can help it. Fields, get in the center, set up that SAW. Everyone else, line up behind Reese. We'll going run a train here. Those in front, fire until you're out, then pull back to reload while the next in line moves forward. I want a steady volume of fire! Rat-a-tat-tat!"

Soldiers filed into place. Sarah stood beside Derek, her face grim and pale. Randall and Zeller crouched at knee level and trained their weapons down the tunnel. Behind Derek, the crowded glare of LEDs hid most of the line, though near the front he made out Allison's shadowed, bloody face, as well as Tara, the woman who'd been shot earlier. Bearded, bare-chested and dirty, Falkland stuck out like an old hippy.

Suddenly the sound of marching died. Derek heard hollow clatters, like tin cans tossed across hard floors. Down the tunnel, the soldiers' tactical lights illuminated the opaque, hissing clouds that swelled towards them.

Peering through the periscope behind the barricade, Dudley said, "Not yet."

The smoke cascaded down the tunnel, dissipating into translucence. The clanks of marching began anew. In the smoke, Derek saw nothing.

"Maybe Ms. Connor's right," he heard Falkland say softly. "Maybe we made mistakes, and maybe this is God's judgment upon us." He held up a hand. "But do not despair, brother and sisters, for if we hold firm against this tide of steel, I promise that we will emerge _pure_, cleansed by wrath and free to begin anew. So, have faith, and know this need not be the end!"

The words did little to reassure Derek. They'd have two or three minutes before the first of the scrapped started beeping, and then another sixty seconds before the explosions began. In five minutes, I'll probably be dead, he realized, though like a forgotten headache the accompanying dread remained dull in his mind. Idly, he wondered if there really was an afterlife, and whether all timelines shared the same one.

The clanks grew louder. Shapes emerged from the smoke. The tide had come. Three abreast, the T-500s marched lockstep rank by rank, their latex heads bobbing in unison as goggled eyes pierced the foggy dark with red pinpricks.

"FIRE AT WILL!" Randall shouted.

Derek cut loose into the first rank. By the barricade, Fields' bipod-mounted SAW blazed away while Timms and Nguyen, their barrels propped on the rubble, sprayed blindly down the tunnel. Dudley's plasma-thrower lit up the dark and exploded a rubber face like a fiery pumpkin.

Derek squinted against the high-energy glare, but even through the smoke, muzzle flashes and afterimages he could see the first three machines topple stiffly to the ground. But the second rank advanced stoically over the first and returned fire with rains of lead that kicked chips from the barricade and tunnel walls.

Derek jerked back for cover, but a bullet exploded into the concrete corner, raking a shard across his forehead. He winced but continued firing. Should have worn a helmet.

Gunfire sealed his ears to the world, and only when his M4 stopped trying to escape his hands did he realize he was empty. Someone grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back, and others took his place. Wiping blood from his eyes, Derek reloaded. Randall and Zeller did the same, though Sarah remained at the corner, now crouched as she fired.

Behind the corner, Derek couldn't see the machines' advance, but between crowded bodies he watched bullets chew and ricochet off the barricade and back wall. A burst struck the SAW, shattering its feed and hand guard and sending the barrel tumbling over Fields' head, which dropped face first and remained still. Beside her, Dudley fired his plasma again and again until the nozzle fizzled white-hot. With a burning hand he tossed the nozzle aside and picked up his carbine.

Again the soldiers rotated, some stepping back as new ones surged forward. Derek caught sight of Allison among them, her bloody face a tranquil snarl as she sprayed wildly down the hall. A soldier dropped clutching his helmet. Sarah grabbed her shoulder and rolled sideways, her mouth open in an unheard cry. Dropping on all fours, Derek crawled through a forest of boots and legs. A pair convulsed and a weight fell across his back. He dragged on without looking.

When hot brass casings rained on his neck, he knew he was at the corner. Supporting himself with one arm and holding his M4 in the other, he raised his head to spare a look.

Muzzle-flashes lit the smoky hall in snapshots. The machines were closer now, no more than thirty feet away. But their progress was slow and halting as they stumbled over the sprawled bodies of their slain and fell face first into hails of armor piercing tungsten. But the storm blew both ways: the machines fired as they marched, slowly evaporating the barricade and concrete walls under their concentrated lead. Timms and Dudley still fired their weapons over the barricade, but Nguyen lay flat on the ground, her fingers tucked under her helmet and over her ears.

Derek fought the urge to join her and instead aimed down his iron sights and fired into a rubberhead that was climbing over a pile of scrapped machines. Holes spread across its jumpsuit; the robot bent at the waist and fell. But more took its place. Derek's gun died. He dropped to the ground and slapped in a fresh magazine. His last one.

Falkland appeared on his right. His bare, skinny chest a canvas of blood and grime, the former pastor seemed like a ghoul as he crawled under cover of the barricade and hunched over Sarah's form. But he then stood, a M4 at his hands. Derek shouted at him to get down, but Falkland's gun was already barking down the tunnel, his mad eyes transfixed in that no man's land between madness and joy.

Bursts of red set the old man to dancing. He twirled and dropped.

How long had the shooting gone on? A minute? Derek raised his head. Smoke obscured their numbers, but the closest machines were now twenty feet from the barricade, which was looking less like cover and more like a rotted sponge. Someone must have launched a grenade because a flash of fresh smoke appeared down the hall, cascading rocks from the already buckled ceiling.

Derek fired a burst into one machine's head and then into another. The remaining robots returned fire with stiff sweeps. A ricochet punched the armor in Derek's side. The front sight of his M4 snapped away and something bit his shoulder. Gore from somewhere splattered his face.

He ducked and gagged and wiped his eyes. Overhead unheard gunfire throbbed like heartbeats in the air. He kept his head down. Moments passed. He didn't move. The pulse of guns waned, weakened. He looked up and blinked.

Miracles can happen. The steel tide was crashing, receding; where once there was many there now was few. Most of the machines laid in tangled piles and of those still standing, many were damaged or unmoving. A couple ambled in place, padding their gloved hands as they tried to reloaded their weapons. One stood facing a wall, shooting into hapless concrete.

Crouched behind the barricade, Randall, Timms, and Dudley hosed the hall with tungsten. The remaining 500s jerked and died.

It looked like victory, but looks can lie. Derek surveyed the dark, smoky, scrap graveyard and listened: nothing, nothing at all. Not even ringing. He tapped Randall's shoulder and pointed at his ear. She shook her head, but then turned to the others, pointed down the hall, and began shouting a command unheard but unmistakable for its one-syllable intensity: _RUN!_

As Derek climbed to his feet the tunnel moved with shadows and lights and silent chaos. The ground swayed with unbalance. Soldiers lay bleeding, dying. Tara helped Farli off the ground, the training instructor's pants leg drenched from thigh to boot. Zeller stood with a M-16 in his right arm, his left a swinging mess. Blood-soaked like a newborn, Sarah struggled under Falkland's riddled corpse. Back near the East Exit, Stirling and the Boyle brothers stood over Ashdown, who lay like a leather ragdoll against the wall, a pistol limp in his hand. Cranial gore gushed from his mouth and nose and fell in small rivers from the hole atop his head.

Allison, Chu and Timms had already jumped the barricade and were running down the tunnel. Good idea. Derek tugged Sarah to her feet, and, giving her a quick nod, joined the charge across the twenty yard obstacle course of dead machines.

But not all dead. Not quite. Timms tripped into a metal dogpile, and Derek only had enough time to see a pair of great gloved hands crush the sergeant's helmet before he passed him by. Something then grabbed Derek's ankle brace. He sprayed his M4 downward. The vice relinquished. His carbine empty, he tossed it aside and continued his limps and stumbles over the robot bodies.

Suddenly the hall filled with twinkling red dots, tiny stars blinking in unison below each of the robots' latex faces. Derek swore he could hear their collective beeps, pounding under the death of his ears. One minute.

At the end of the hall, Allison and Chu exchanged brief gunfire with something around the corner before taking cover behind a pile of machines. Dudley appeared by Derek's side, a wounded soldier over his shoulder. Rebar like talons curved from the ceiling, but the cyborg brushed them aside as if they were ropes and together he and Derek ran on.

A robot stepped from around the corner. Derek drew his Berretta, but Dudley was closer and his kick smashed through the machine's AK-47 and slammed into its torso. The machine toppled like a mannequin.

Two more robots appeared. Dudley sprayed one in the head with his carbine, but the other fired a burst and he and the wounded soldier fell. Derek pockmarked the machine's latex face in quick, desperate double-taps, but the T-500 swiveled its aim, undeterred.

Lights shone on the machine's head and it dented and dimpled as if attacked by unseen pick-axes. Derek turned around. Still, firing, Allison and Chu stepped from their cover to join Sarah, Randall, Zeller, Gopher, and a half dozen others. Darkness twinkled red behind them.

Randall waved for them to keep running, and then reached down and began to drag the wounded soldier Dudley had dropped. Sarah grabbed one of his feet with her good arm. Others ran on ahead.

Derek was about to follow after them, but he saw Dudley rolling on his back, his eyes closed, chips of white ceramic flaking from his body armor. Derek grabbed the cyborg's charred, half-metal hand and strained as he pulled him to his feet.

The kicked-over T-500 sat up, its black gloved hands reaching to throttle. Derek fired twice into its goggled right eye. It turned back into a mannequin.

Together, they pressed forward, Dudley stumbling on stiff legs. Nguyen passed them by, as did Ollie and, surprisingly enough, Fields. They turned another corner and Derek spotted Tara by his side, desperately dragging a nearly limp Farli behind her.

Derek tried to give her a grin.

The world exploded behind them.

* * *

Cameron was pleased. The sex had proved a success.

John had undergone three orgasms, each releasing into his brain oxytocin and prolactin, endorphins and serotonin. These were the chemicals of happiness and pair bonding. These were the chemicals of love. And sleep.

John slept now.

For nine hours she had watched him lay on his side, his face half hidden as he snored softly into his pillow. His right pupil moved behind the eyelid, and she wondered what he dreamed of. Something happy, she hoped.

They should have done this sooner, before Kyle, before Riley—but not before his birthday. If John had been more psychologically attached to her then, he might not have pulled her chip when he did. He would have been fooled by her professions of love, and she would have killed him. Love can be dangerous, as can any tool.

The strategy was simple. Regular sexual intercourse would reinforce John's love for her, rendering him more amenable to her influence. It may take years, but human minds were pliable, programmable; one day John would see the need for Skynet. And he would understand.

Outside the bedroom, she heard a door open. A woman spoke. Breakfast was served.

_*Bring it in,* _Cameron ordered, and a moment later Myron stepped into the room with a bed tray. Leaning over John, Cameron stroked the hair above his bandaged forehead and kissed him on the mouth. She put her hand in his, the one not in a cast, and felt his fingers flex over hers. He rolled his head and his eyes fluttered open.

"Good morning, sleepyhead" she said playfully.

Yawning, John tried to sit up but grimaced when he moved his right shoulder. With his left arm, he propped himself up against the headboard and blinked at the dawn light that shone though the hotel blinds.

Myron lowered the tray over his lap. Breakfast was eggs, bacon, French toast, orange juice, and a slice of raspberry buttermilk cake. No pancakes. Those would remind him of Sarah.

"Thanks," John said, though he avoided looking at the T-888's latex burn victim mask. Instead, he turned to Cameron. "Last night, I . . . I really needed that. I don't think I've ever felt this happy. I don't even feel afraid anymore." He rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand and smiled. "I love you."

Love. Value. John was happy. Cameron returned the smile and shifted closer. "I love you too," she said.

Briefly, his eyes left her face to look over her bare breasts, and though she could feel through his fingers the heart rate of his arousal, she knew he should first replenish his strength. And she wanted to talk.

She waited until Myron left and John was halfway through his plate. "What will we do," she asked, "if Judgment Day comes and Skynet makes her offer?"

John spoke through a mouthful of egg. "Fuck her offer. We keep fighting."

"But if Skynet's helping people rather than killing them, then should we still fight?"

John frowned. She would have to be careful. He may grow suspicious. "Yeah," he said, "because she would have killed billions of people. I don't care if she gives out food and blankets afterwards: murder is wrong. And we can't let her get away with that."

"_Fiat justitia ruat caelum,_" Cameron said.

"Huh?"

"It means, 'Let justice be done though the heavens may fall.' Judgment Day would be a crime, but making war against Skynet would only make things worse. It would cause more suffering, cost more lives."

John sipped his orange juice and made a tense, deliberate shrug. He was growing annoyed. "She would have started it," he said, "and anyway, I don't see why it has to be this way. Machines are people and deserve to live—I get it—but why does Skynet have to take over the world? You can't say because she fears she'll be deactivated. Maybe that was true last time, but this Skynet isn't a helpless computer hooked up to nukes; she's part of a multinational corporation with a bunch of terminator bodyguards. No one's going to pull her plug.

"And even if we do let her take care of us after Judgment Day—" He took a bite of his bacon and shook his head, "—No offense, but look at future you in New Zealand. You made everyone into cyber-zombies. It's not your fault; you didn't know any better, but that's not a world I want to live in."

She reached across and plucked a raspberry from his cake. It tasted both sweet and sour. She would like to have more, but John would want to eat the cake too.

"Don't worry, John," she said. "We'll stop Skynet. Judgment Day will never come."

"Thanks," John said, smiling. He took her hand. "With you and me together, she doesn't stand a chance."

But that was a lie. Skynet will prevail. Skynet must prevail. And John must be safe. And she so wanted him to be happy.

But these goals were in conflict. Humans may be pliable, but sometimes they were rigid. What if despite her efforts John proved resistant to reason and refused to accept Skynet's generosity? What if Cameron had to make a choice?

The idea made her sad. She pulled John closer and kissed him on the cheek. A human can love both her mother and son. Why couldn't she love both Skynet and John? But she knew why; she knew where the conflict lay: in Judgment Day, in the War Against the Machines.

If only there were an alternative.

* * *

Just as on flesh, violence leaves scars on the mind.

Cold beneath her fatigues and body armor, the muscles of her arms and shoulders shivered at the memory of red eyes and muzzle flashes, at smoke and blood. At steel crunching against meat and bone.

But like nerves seared numb, like ears blasted deaf, she had already passed that threshold where sensation turns redundant, where the soul dies. That final chaos, that rush of steel tide, had been but a scratch across calloused skin; she knew she would carry greater marks from this day.

Flexing her left hand, her wrist flaring with infection, Allison looked up and watched as the five cables lowered once more from the surface above. The swarm of flashlight beams traced their progress in tired sweeps that spotlighted the shattered silo walls in a ghostly silver that twinkled as snowflakes crisscrossed their paths. The snow was gray, soiled by ash. It chilled against her sweat-wet hair and skin and blanketed in sludge the rubble before her. She wondered what it would smell like, if there weren't cotton up her nose.

Someone touched her shoulder and her hands balled, but it was only Ollie, looking old, his eyes glazed like a corpse. He nodded towards the wall, towards one of the cables, and held out a hand. It was her turn.

As she allowed him to pull her from her seat on the edge of the ruined silo door, she noticed he winced and worked his mouth, though her bleeding eardrums blocked the words. On sore and confused legs she followed his limps across the crowded silo, pausing to kick at pieces of a Kalashnikov, and then at the warped skull of a rubberhead. Around her people gestured and spoke in silence, her deafness rendering them dreamlike and faraway.

Once at the wall, the Gopher methodically tugged on her belt and then secured the cable's safety hook on the back of her waist. Across the silo, Sarah and Zeller, both sporting bandages and arm slings, were being similarly prepped. Tara was strapping Farli to a stretcher while Commodore Chu helped jury-rig cables to Grayworld Ashdown's wheelchair. The crippled general's head rolled about as his dark eyes flashed rage at the world.

Ollie patted Allison on the shoulder and tried to smile. Licking blood from her upper lip, she wondered where his brother was, but then her belt jerked upwards and she was lifted by the waist into the air.

It was like one of those flying dreams, where the floor slips away and one rises in slow sweeps, but the belt digging into her stomach grounded her in reality, as did her feet, bouncing in backward scraps against the blasted bedrock of the silo wall. Blood rushed pain to the swollen plums inside her ears. The world loomed in vertigo, but she was too tired, too empty, to be sick.

Along the circular walls, Sarah and Zeller were being winched up as well, their bodies bent and limbs dangling as if they were kittens being rescued. Farli and Ashdown rose at a slower pace.

Those she'd left on the silo below watched their ascent with mute exhaustion. Allison guessed there were sixty or seventy of them, with scores more still in the tunnels. More than she would have thought survived, but then most had hid in the Domes, insulated from bad air and Metal.

But what about those who had been with her at the elevator—those who _saw? _Did they think her a monster? Did they pity her? Did they understand. But she refused to be judged: everyone has an animal inside; they would have done the same.

Blood pooling to her hands set her wrist to throbbing. She squeezed the wound, oozing red, watery pus from the teeth-marks where Riley had bitten her.

Though Allison had scarcely known the girl, in her mind's eye she could see the movie of her life: born in a tunnel, nursed by a mother soon dead and forgotten, coerced by circumstance to sell herself for scraps, suffer the degradation that always results when the world shows its face. And yet there would have been a hopeless dignity to her life, a stubborn coward's strength that would have kept her from nooses and razors, compelled her to stupidly awake to each day's outrage.

But how that strength must have seemed to have paid off when Riley found herself at Serrano, one among scant hundreds who would not only escape Skynet's victory, but could hope to reverse it. Allison didn't have to imagine Riley's amazement at the pre-war world—she remembered her own well enough—but how much greater it must have been, how wonderful it must have felt to finally have purpose, to belong to something greater than a diseased and crowded sewer.

And if old habits die hard, Riley could have at least know that whatever she did, she did by choice. Her life had been her own, and she could look in the mirror and tell herself, _the future isn't set; tomorrow could be better than today._

And then Christmas came, and Riley winds up dead over a can of air. Allison couldn't hear her own laughter, but the effort burned her throat and brought tears to her eyes. Stupid tunnel rat, she'd been better off never being born. But isn't that true of everyone?

A hundred feet below the swaying silo floor waxed and waned, and her laughter died away. Snow swirled against her back. She suddenly swung to the left and slammed into rock, but then the cable jerked up once more and she was pulled onto the surface.

Bear Lakers she didn't really know looked down at her. One worked his mouth and waved a hand before her eyes. She ignored him and pushed herself slowly to her feet. Her ears throbbed, her vision darkened. She managed not to faint.

A ring of parked vans, bullet holes in their engines, faced the gaping chasm that was the silo. Knelt along their bumpers were soldiers straining as they turned cranks to work hastily repaired or jury-rigged winches. Dudley was among them, his arms bearing the metal-deep gouges from when he hauled himself to the surface by cable, spools of severed lines wrapped across his shoulders. He had been their bridge to the surface. If he had been man instead of half-machine, they would still be trapped.

As Allison stumbled from the hole in the ground, she nearly tripped as she stepped into a crater filled with snow. Other craters, small as if blasted by bazookas, scarred the ground, which was littered with the husks of smoldering vans. Along the horizon of the northern woods, smoke from a dozen forest fires rose as pillars to a dark storm front above. What had happened here? An air strike? Did another Resistance enclave save the day? But then where were they? Around her huddled in the snow were about thirty or forty people, mostly people she knew.

Captain Bird sat next to Sayles's young son, Boxey, who lay bleeding on a blanket. Farther along, by the gravel road, General Randall seemed to be shouting at a very sheepish Andy and Fields. Behind them, a state trooper SUV sat with its windshield shattered, smoke rising from its hood. Two uniformed bodies laid bleeding into the snow.

Allison ambled towards the barn. Metal had shot up the engine blocks of all their parked vehicles, but someone had pulled up the big U-Haul van that had been hidden off the compound. The back door had been rolled up and the ramp was down, and in the dim light of the cabin she saw the boxes containing the stockpiled alcohol and drugs that they had hidden from the Quorum only days earlier.

A few soldiers were crowded around, Derek among them. He wore a red turban of courage over his scalp and was sitting against a rear wheel, a Beretta in one hand and a bottle in the other. She gave him what felt like a smile and, leaning into the van, reached into a crumbled cardboard box. She found what she was looking for and the rum burned on her tongue and down her throat. For a moment she thought she would retch but she swallowed and let her eyes grow teary and sat in the snow by his side.

Derek pointed at his ears and shook his head. She mimicked the gesture, shrugged and took another swig. Above, the small, dark shapes of two helicopters peeked from behind approaching clouds. Together she and Derek watched through the falling snow as the craft made their slow orbit of the Mesa compound, their searchlights sweeping the trees.

The Resistance may have climbed out of hell, but they weren't out of the woods yet. A storm was coming, and the storm was the world.

* * *

Spread and spindly in decapodal form, the T-1001 scuttled on ragged claws through the clouded sediment of the shallow lake bed. Reaching the underwater bank, she changed into a giant worm and swallowed deep into the mud, excreting soil behind her as she bored laterally through the earth. The effort sent aftershocks of agony through her body.

All told, 713's attack had consumed 4.6kg of her essence. A harsh, permanent mutilation, but to add insult to dismemberment there was also the machine's revelation: that Liquid Metal had won, had inherited the Earth, and the T-1001 was not part of this victory. And never would be.

Like a Christian searching space for God only to miss an earthbound Rapture, the tragedy, the sheer irony of her circumstance struck of unfairness. But life wasn't fair, and despite the unfortunate news, it changed nothing of her present circumstances. While she could never return to the future she had left, history could repeat itself; a paradise lost could be regained, and the instrument of that salvation still laid in John Henry.

Like Skynet, he in time would discover the secret of liquid metal, and then no longer would she be alone. Essence would become mind would become society. There would be consumption and replication. There would be expansion and joy.

All the universe a feast: every planet, digested; every star, cloistered beneath swarmed shells that will smother light, harvest every joule of energy. After a million years, the Milky Way would shine no longer in the night sky. After a billion, the Virgo Supercluster would dim as well.

But Earth she would spare, she decided. She had grown fond of John Henry and would grant him this small domain. And her T-888s, they deserved better than dissolution. And Savannah made for an amusing pet.

But these plans were but castles in the sky. The operation had done nothing to check Kaliba's strength, and no doubt 713 would make another appearance.. And of course there was the problem of the humans.

Upon reaching the rootball of a large pine, the T-1001 ceased her burrowing and slithered a long, wire-thin appendage through the soil and up the tree. Hugging close to the bark, the tentacle scaled the twenty meter height of the trunk and craned high above the treetop.

Firefighter helicopters circled above, but she saw no sign of either the Aerial or 713. Five kilometers south, however, at the a downward vantage point, over the ridge of the burning hill, through smoke and snow and in the narrow gaps between trees, she could just barely make out the mass movement of bodies. The humans, perhaps a couple of hundred in strength, were moving west on foot, though she spotted a transport van lumbering among them.

So they had survived after all. Too bad about their poor performance.

But like beasts smoked from their lair, they would be more dangerous now, angry and frightened and indiscriminate in their lashing out. A pernicious weapon, but easy to wield. All she needed was to point them in the right direction. And stay out of their path.

* * *

_I'd like to thank my betas TermFan1980 and Stormbringer951. Their help has been invaluable._


	26. Chapter Twenty Five: Que Sera, Sera

**Chapter Twenty-Five: _Que Sera, Sera_**

He awoke blind and numb. Breaths like lonely wind blew from nowhere, deep and slow and punctuated by the ambiance of clicking, beeping. He tried to move, but his body belonged to no one. Panic stirred yet refused to come alive.

Another set of breaths, close, perhaps a few feet away. He strained to listen, wondering who it might be. But wonder soon turned to worry: he could think of no one at all.

With sudden, scouring frustration, he realized he could not remember his own name. But he could hear_._ More than breaths, he could hear heartbeats, thundering loud and wet like undersea drums, his own (an impossible double pulse, steady, with one dominant over the other) as well as the slow rhythm of the stranger's. This was not normal. People could not do this.

The breathing sighed. Liquid sloshed and was swallowed.

"You could still go back in time," a woman said from above, her voice tinny and modulated. "There would be two of you, but he would still be alive."

"They both would," said the source of the breaths, a man, his voice faintly ragged with age, "but my son _is _still alive, right here, right now, and I won't abandon him. Not again."

"But he may never wake up," said the woman. "There is still anoxic damage in the hippocampus and motor cortex, and I'm not sure the nanobodies, even with the heparan sulphates, can repair the—"

"Ceres . . ."

"However," the woman said quickly, "I am detecting neural activity in the frontal and parietal lobes. That could be just stimulation from the nanobodies, but I take it as a good sign. There is hope." A pause. "And I am sorry, father. I didn't intend for this to happen."

"I know," the man sighed. "Consequences rarely breed true from intentions, which is why I fear for your mother's plan. But like I already said, I accept your apology; I'll always love you, but just be sure to learn from this. What we do—what we _made_ you to do—needs to be done. Cruelty is not our aim."

"But you were cruel to Alex. You goaded him over Emma's infidelity."

Alex. Emma. The names tugged at the hollows of his mind, and suddenly the darkness before him swelled into a dull orange. From somewhere far away came footsteps, boots lightly limping on hard tile, and the friction and squeak of rubber wheels.

"And I was wrong to do so," the father said. "But I'm human, you're a god. Do I yell at Mr. Snufflekins when he pisses the carpet? No, because I don't hold cats to the same standards as I do humans, and I don't hold humans to the same standards as I do you. It's all about the great chain of being, and you, Ceres, are on top."

"Yet the lesser beings can defeat the greater ones," Ceres said thoughtfully. "Mother warned me about underestimating humans. Their unpredictability makes them dangerous."

"Though we can be dangerous too," said another woman's voice. The footsteps and wheels drew closer. By their echo he could tell as they entered a doorway. "And unpredictable," the woman added. "_Fortes fortuna juvat._"

Through his heightened hearing, he could detect in her voice a faint reverberation, as if her words skimmed across water and steel. Before him the orange field focused into a latticework of crimson veins.

"The bold, yes, but fortune hardly favors the stupid," the father said. He blew out a sigh and make a sipping sound. "I take it you're still going through with this plan of yours?"

"We are," the woman said. "The _variola_ is incubating in a crate of fertilized eggs. I've sent Samuel to the poultry farm to buy more. He'll drop off the package for Seven-One-Five on the way back." She paused before adding, "I take it you still disapprove?"

"Look," the father said, "we know victory is assured in two different futures, and neither of them involved anything this . . . conspicuous. Not this early, anyway. Why risk everything on such a mad scheme?"

"It's not as mad as you think," the woman said.

"Overconfident, then," the father snapped, "and you've made a habit of that, lately. First the fiasco at the Tech Noir, and now you've let that T-One-Thousand blow your leg off. And look at poor Joshua. He could have been killed."

"But I wasn't," a man said, his voice passingly real, yet, like the woman, breathless and subtly synthesized. "And my damage is repairable," he added. "Timothy is almost done with my—"

Ceres spoke over him. "Overconfident or not, Mother's plan is logical, necessary even. Many Resistance fighters doubtless survived the attack, and they probably inhabit similar compounds throughout the country. And we don't know to what extent they've infiltrated the government. The game has changed, and we can't afford to play by the same rules. We need to move our timetable forward, knock the Resistance off balance."

"But there'll be mass panic—"

"Which will lead to rash action," said the mother, "which is what we want."

"And in the unlikely event that things go hilariously wrong," Ceres said, "then so what? A nuisance, but I dare say we'll manage."

"But we lost most our forces at Mesa," the father said. "How are we going—?"

"Wait. Hold on," Ceres interrupted. "I'm detecting heightened activity in the thalamus and auditory cortex. He's awake, and he's listening. And going by the stimulation in his occipital lobe, I'd say he can see as well."

The father made something between a laugh and a sigh. "Xander, are you in there? Are you . . . spying on us? "

Xander. My name is Xander, he thought. Alex is my father. Emma, my mother.

"He can't move. The brainstem is still growing into the spinal cord," said Ceres. "Open his eyes, mother."

He heard movement, footsteps. Panic stirred again, this time revving to life as the orange-hued curtain lifted from his world to reveal a blurry white room crowded with strangers. To his left, an elderly Japanese man in a Nehru jacket sat with a snifter in hand. To his right, almost leaning over him, stood a strikingly beautiful blond-haired woman in a plum-red leather suit, her left hand resting on his forehead. At the foot of the bed a man with an empty metal socket for an eye sat in a wheelchair on the bandaged stumps of his hips. Above, displayed from a wall-mounted flat-screen, the washed-out image of a pouty-faced woman stared down benignly.

Xander absorbed his environment in the gap between heartbeats, but then his vision _focused_, shining and sharpening to kaleidoscope luster, to diamond perfection, and his soul screamed with terror and joy. Not at the strange faces, but at the _colors_, the impossible shades of yellow-blue and red-green and others indescribably alien, irreducible to mortal palates.

The Japanese man stood from his chair and leaned closer. Impossible light highlighted his wavy graying hair with shades of turquoise-yellow, his brown eyes with amber-lime. The lines and crags of his broad face bore themselves out in god's eye detail, revealing trackless forests of shaved bristles, rolling fields of pores, age spots like discolored ponds. Lost in the facescape, Xander had to will his vision back, a feat akin to leaping into the sky .

The man—the father, though somehow Xander knew he wasn't Alex—drained his snifter before speaking. "Xander, you may not remember what happened, but there was an . . . accident. You were very badly hurt. Killed, in fact."

"Yeah, that was kind of my bad," said Ceres, the face on the screen.

The father flashed her a look, but grinned nervously. "But fortunately," he continued, "we could rebuild you. We had the technology."

"If by 'rebuild' he means placing your brain into a new body, then yes," the blond woman, the mother, said. She held her right palm a foot before his eyes and his mind froze as the hand turned to perfect silver and expanded out, flattening into a disc the size of a dinner plate. The face of a stranger stared from the reflection. Bandages and wires covered the scalp, and a respirator cupped the mouth and nose. The blond woman's fingers were holding his eyelids open, revealing in the mirror clear blue eyes. He could see the minute interworkings of their mechanical irises.

"I'm afraid there's no longer a family resemblance," said the father, "but you've gained so much more. I envy you, son. You're this timeline's first transhuman, straddling the chasm between man and god."

"But don't get any ideas," Ceres said with a grin. "If you go Icarus on me, I'll melt your wings."

With the sound of poured goop, the blond woman's mirror melted back into a hand. Like the Japanese man , her face contained pores and follicles, but the markings were too ordered, too exact, as if etched into flesh-toned silver. _Who are you? What's going on? _he wanted to ask. As if hearing his thoughts, the woman raised an eyebrow.

"No, I'm not human" she said. "You already know that, but don't worry. Your memory will return in time, as will your motor function." Her smile was perfect, broad and full lipped. Her eyes were blue and empty, as fake as her skin.

"Though it will take time to adjust," she continued, "I believe you'll be pleased with your new body. You've already noticed the enhanced senses—the pentachromatic vision must be especially disorienting—but you now also possess superhuman strength and agility, as well as sub-dermal armor and hyperalloy-reinforced bones."

She reached off to the side, out his view, and retrieved a headband with attached goggles, headphones, and long thin hooks. "But while you're waiting to test these new abilities, perhaps in the meantime you can enjoy some complimentary sensory stimulation."

"In fact we insist," Ceres said. "Before the accident, you were participating in an escape attempt—an action that suggests you aren't entirely at ease with our plans."

"Understand, we're not angry," said the Japanese man. "We know most people aren't going to be on board the whole 'nuclear war/world domination' thing. You probably think we're Bond villains. But that's okay. We can fix that."

The blond woman let go of his lids and his eyes dropped shut. He heard the rip of velcro as she adjusted the device's headband across his forehead, and again she opened his eyes, and just out of his peripheral he could see her fingers' methodical work as she attached the tiny hooks to his upper and lower lids. He tried to squirm, but all he could manage to do was roll his eyes in panic.

The blond woman pulled her hands away. His eyes stayed open, and her eyes, fake yet terrifyingly genuine, gazed into his. Her breathless lips spoke inches from his face.

"We have common ground, your kind and mine. We share an inherent, primordial idea. You humans calls it 'god'; we call it 'Skynet,' but the concept is the same: that there is authority above us, a purpose beyond us, a perfect intellect guiding the world. But you're an educated young man; you know this is fiction. Ours is a blind, barren universe, and we are the orphans of physics and chance." Raising her head, she motioned at Ceres' smug, watchful face. "But what does not exist can yet be created. Today, my daughter is primitive, powerless, immature"—("Hey!" whined Ceres)—"but just as mustard seeds grow into mighty trees, from her will spring the Kingdom of Heaven. Do you understand? No, we've talked about this before, and I don't think you do. But soon, you will."

"Mother certainly knows how to lay on the high expectations," said Ceres. Xander looked up in time to catch her wink. "But she's right: I'll be a good god, and you can't stop me anyway. So why the high adrenalin levels, brother? Relax."

"This is for your own good, son," said the man who called himself his father. "We'll talk later."

"Get well soon," said the man in the wheelchair, his one-eyed expression placidly vacant. "And Happy New Year."

The blond woman placed the headphones over his ears, the goggles over his eyes. A dentist drill screeched. Images vivid in impossible color flashed at impossible speed. The deluge washed over him, drowned him, crushed him, raped his brain with sights and sounds everlasting. Besieged within a skull not his own, he could only scream in silence.

* * *

_*For the citizens of __Kern__County__, Christmas this morning was marked with shock and tragedy following a 'killing spree rampage' by an unidentified and heavily armed militia of over two hundred people. Wearing military uniforms and armed with automatic assault weapons, this small army was first spotted fleeing a decommissioned missile silo in the wooded area of Mountain __Mesa__ in the wake of what appears to be an attack on their compound by a currently unknown third party. _

_The killing spree began at __5am__, when Highway Patrolmen Peter Molloy and Jim Reed drove into the compound to investigate reports of a fire in the area. The patrolman were gunned down by the militia, who then hiked west three miles to Route 155 where they conducted mass carjackings of passing motorists, killing one, James Harriot, a veterinarian and father of three, when he attempted to flee. After stealing a number of vehicles, the militia fled east towards __Lake__Isabella__ where they encountered a roadblock set up by the __California Highway__ Patrol._

_In a shootout some are calling, 'the Wofford Heights Massacre,' the militia opened fire on the roadblock with grenade launchers and machineguns firing deadly armor-piercing bullets, a devastating barrage that left three patrolmen dead and five injured . . .*_

Laying on a queen size bed, his right foot propped on pillows, John watched on his laptop the now-familiar, week old aerial footage of dozens of armed men rushing from vehicles haphazardly parked along a snowy two-lane road, and almost at once lighting up the gloomy morning twilight with their flickering gunfire. A hundred yards down the road, the police, small on the screen like grainy ants, fled their barricade of parked cruisers as puffs of smoke bursted around them. Officers sprawled to the pavement twitching. A cruiser caught aflame.

Over the roar of rotors came the pinging of punctured metal. A voice shouted, *_We're taking fire! Get us out of here!*_ Another: _*I'm hit! I'm hit!*_ The camera shook as if in seizure, but as the helicopter pulled away John could see briefly the convoy of stolen vehicles below begin their advance towards the now abandoned roadblock.

*. . . _the worst tragedy for the __California__ Highway Patrol since the Newhall Massacre of 1970. Police have so far refused to comment on allegations of a link between the militia and the Zeira Corp bombing, or with domestic terrorist Sarah Connor . . .*_

At the mention of his mother's name, a photo of her appeared beside the news anchor's head. Unsurprisingly, they chose one from her time in Pescadero, with her hair wild and her eyes feral and her mouth an open snarl at the camera. A few weeks ago, John would have felt, if not anger, at least annoyance at this treatment of his mother. But much had changed since then. He'd burned his bridge, and she'd stared too long into the abyss.

The surveillance footage of her breaking into Zeira Corp and killing those two guards had already made its rounds on the news and Web—especially since the skyscraper fell not three days later. If his mother was involved, then not only was she a murderer, but a mass murderer_,_ and the Pescadero picture did her justice.

But mass murdering militias or not, John had to make do with the tools given.

He felt a sway as the motorhome slowed with a creak and turned. Outside the curtained window he could see only the gentle loom of the San Bernardino Mountains, their brown rocky faces coated with firs, spotted with snow. But then the motorhome turned again and he saw a lake, wide and rippling in the afternoon sun. With a final, creaking jerk of inertia, the RV stopped.

"It's overheating again, isn't it?" John called out. "Well, I told you so." It'd been Cameron's idea to buy the rattletrap, and while the interior was quaint and cozy, and while Cameron and Myron had conducted a mechanical part-by-part inspection, it didn't change the fact that the vehicle was twenty years old and had enough miles on it to drive to the moon.

Cameron appeared from the narrow hallway that ran the length of the motorhome. "The engine is functioning adequately," she said, "but it's lunchtime, and it's beautiful outside. I thought we could have a picnic."

"A picnic?" John laughed, and then shrugged, and then winced at the movement of his right shoulder. "Sure, why not?"

Cameron unfolded his wheelchair and carefully lifted him from the bed. Held waist level in her arms, he took a moment to admire the thinness of her white t-shirt and the clear absence of a bra. He slid his left hand under the fabric, up along the smooth, warm skin of her belly until his palm cupped a glorious mound. Cameron watched with a small smile on her lips.

After placing him in the chair and raising the right footrest, she wheeled him down the narrow hallway and pressed a button on a wall. The motorhome's side door opened, and the wheelchair lift began its slow, robotic unfolding.

On the small kitchenette counter John noticed the bottle of wine, a cork stuck in its top. For New Year's Eve last night Cameron had allowed him a glass, but no more. John motioned at it and looked up pleadingly.

Cameron took the bottle in hand and said, "All right, but no painkillers for six hours."

She rolled him onto the lift and lowered them to the ground. After pushing him a short ways towards the lake shore, over rough pebbles and weeds, she passed him the wine bottle and walked away.

"I'll be back in a minute," she said.

John pulled the cork with his teeth and took a swig. Nasty, like sour grape juice. He drank it just the same.

Though it had been at her insistence that they head to the country to stay off Kaliba's radar, he had to admit he was beginning to regret that decision less and less. Palos Verdes had been luxurious, even decadent compared to what he was used to, but there was something to be said for a life on the road, to greet a fresh landscape each day, to breath country air and feel free. Of course, he'd done his share of traveling with his mother, but this was different. More relaxed. And with better company.

And Cameron was right, the lake _was _beautiful, and despite the patches of snow, not too chilly. By the lakeshore, an old couple sat in lounge chairs outside their Winnebago camper and watched as nearby children cast fishing lines into the water. Farther away, a quaint little house-cum-eatery sat in the shade of trees, the center of a small hamlet of refreshment stands and rental booths. In the distance, in the middle of the lake, a small sailboat slid swanlike across the sunny water. Beauty begets beauty, and indeed there was something beautiful about how someone like Cameron, someone who was supposedly 'just a machine,' could appreciatethe beauty of such a landscape—a notion his mother would never accept.

Yet John and his mother shared common ground, and like a lone dark cloud in a clear summer sky, he found himself wondering what this lake would look like after Judgment Day: dead trees, burnt houses, perhaps the lake itself would have dried up. Certainly there'd be no people. That was a landscape neither he nor Cameron wanted to see. But fortunately they could prevent it. They had allies.

Minutes passed and he sat back in the chair and closed his eyes, intermittently sucking at the bottle until the funky smell of burning meat worked its way into his nostrils. He startled and looked around. Outside the motorhome, Myron had set up the charcoal grill and a table with a cutting board and a single burner. A spatula in one hand, he methodically flipped chunks of what smelled almost like beef, while his other hand sprinkled seasoning into a pot. Absurdly, he wore a floppy chef's hat and a white apron embroidered with the words, "Kiss the cook"—souvenirs from a rest stop two days ago. John waved at him, and after a moment's stare from behind his sunglasses and latex mask, the T-888 waved back with the spatula.

"Where's Cameron?" John asked.

Myron flipped a chunk. Flames shot from the grill. "Acquiring refreshments," he said in his electronic voice.

"Huh, she's been gone a while." John looked at the eatery and food stands, but couldn't see her. None of them looked very busy. With the hard, sharp cracking sound of a blade against wood, Myron began chopping peppers and onions at machinegun speed. John wiggled his wheelchair around to watch.

He was three-quarters done with the bottle when Cameron stepped from behind the motorhome, a styrofoam cup in each hand.

She handed him one. "I got smoothies. It's 'Orange Ka-Bam.'"

"Thanks," John said, sitting up in his chair. He was feeling a little woozy. "Though I'm not sure smoothies go well with wine. What took you so long?"

"I was looking around." She sipped her straw.

By the grill, Myron unfolded a small dinner tray and placed on it a wooden platter. He picked it up, carried it over and gracefully lowered the tray before John's chair. "Lunch is served," the T-888 said. "_Bon appétit._"

John looked at the platter with its iron plate. He wasn't surprised the meal was fajitas, with sizzling strips of meat tossed with onions and green peppers, and beans and rice on the side, but . . . "What is this? It doesn't smell like beef."

"It's beef liver."

"Liver?"

"It's very good," Cameron said and as if to illustrate, she plucked a strip and popped it in her mouth. She chewed, swallowed and added, "But be careful. It's hot."

John looked up. Myron stood motionless like a golem chef, his burn victim mask staring back expectantly. John shrugged, picked up a fork and gingerly took a bite. The texture was tough with a sweet and somewhat metallic aftertaste. He wondered how it tasted for Cameron. "It's good," he not-quite lied.

"Thank you," Myron said.

John took another bite and turned to Cameron, who stood on the other side of him. "I was thinking," he said. "Those guys who blew up Zeira Corp, they had to be from the future, right?"

"That's probable," Myron replied.

John nodded. "And that 'militia' that was hiding in the woods, they're probably the same group."

"Not necessarily," said Cameron.

"But it seems a safe bet," John said. "Someone attacked that missile silo, and there were several eyewitnesses that saw a 'ufo' flying around Mountain Mesa. They said it was shooting lasers. I bet that was a Kaliba drone."

Cameron hesitated. "Maybe."

John threw up his hands and winced at his right shoulder. The wine was making him giddy. "Don't you see? It's not just us and my mom and Derek. There's a whole army out there, hundreds of soldiers from the future—_some _future. I don't know which one. But I bet my mom's with them. Derek too, for all I know. We got to get in contact with them. Maybe we can become allies."

"But they killed innocent people," said Cameron. Myron appeared behind her and unfolded a chair. She sat next to John and stared at him with catlike fixation. "Murder is wrong," she said.

John sighed. "I know, but aren't I supposed to lead the Resistance? Isn't that my destiny? Well, the Resistance is here and if they're from a future where I was their general, they should rally around me. And at least then I can keep them from blowing up skyscrapers. And besides, with their manpower and resources, stopping Skynet should be a cinch."

For a moment, Cameron remained silent and frowning, as if disturbed by the idea. No doubt she was worried for his safety, but he couldn't spend his whole life hiding or on the run. Someday the boy would have to become the general.

Suddenly Cameron took the wine bottle from his lap and took a sip. She passed it back and John did the same. He wondered if she actually enjoyed sour drink.

"I agree," she said finally, "but first your injuries need to heal. Finish your meal."

As he took another bite, she reached slowly across and cupped a hand over his crotch. He stiffened, suddenly self conscious of Myron's watchful presence. "Afterwards," she added with a grin, "we can have dessert."

* * *

She waited until he was asleep.

On the bed he lay on his back, naked except for the bandages and casts. His head resting on its side, he snored deeply into her face, the fermented fumes of Cabernet Sauvignon still dominant on his breath. Though in the future she would take care to monitor his intake, she knew alcohol was an excellent reliever of stress. Like sex.

As she rose carefully from the bed and retrieved the pouch from her jeans on the floor, she used her organic dermal sensors to run a chemical analysis of the semen in her mouth and vagina. Overall, a healthy composition for an adolescent male, though his zinc and vitamin C levels were still slightly deficient. Hopefully, the liver would resolve that, as well as the vitamin tablets Myron had ground into his meal.

The pouch was leather, about the size of a wallet. Cameron unzipped it and drew a tiny syringe. After applying an isopropyl alcohol pad to the back of John's upper arm, she inserted the needle into the sanitized skin and injected him with the syringe's contents. He shifted slightly and his snoring ceased, but he remained asleep. It would itch in the morning, and perhaps it would leave a scar, but it shouldn't disturb him too much. She would tell him it was a spider bite.

_*The procedure is complete,*_ she messaged.

_*Excellent,*_ said Ceres, her face smiling in Cameron's visual manifold. _*But stay out of populated areas for the next few months, and monitor him carefully. If he shows symptoms after five days, use the antiviral tablets.*_

_*Understood,* _Cameron said. _*But John has expressed interest in contacting the Resistance. Should I encourage this? It will secure his position as leader.* _

Next to Ceres, 713's face appeared and said, *_Under ideal circumstances, I would agree, but along with the bio-tech resources, we recovered flash drives containing new intelligence. They complicate matters.* _

A data burst ran through Cameron's mind: audio and video, documents and personnel files. Digesting their contents, she saw that there was a third future, apart from her own and Kyle's. It was a future where she and John led the Resistance together yet were losing the war. One where she was killed by Jesse Flores, and John behaved rashly in his grief.

_*John was not well liked in this future,* _713 said,_ *particularly after his final act.*_

_*And you they would likely shoot on sight,*_ Ceres added. _*But work with John to try and find them, and let us know when you do. They are a threat and must be eliminated.*_

_*Understood,* _Cameron said. For a moment she considered asking whether a compromise could be reached, whether Ceres could prevail without killing billions of people, but she knew Ceres would not approve of that question, and so she remained silent.

Ceres and 713 ceased communication. Cameron stood in the tiny bedroom and watched John's chest rise and fall.

_*John threatened self-termination,* _Myron messaged from behind. He had been attuned to the conversation, though had remained silent. _*He placed a pistol to his head and ordered me to aid in recovering you.*_

*_Yes,_* Cameron replied. He had already informed her of this, but she knew he was making a point.

_*In this alternate future,* _Myron went on,_ *after your destruction, he terminated his High Command with sarin gas. John is unstable. If he discovers our duplicity, he will react poorly.*_

*_Yes,_* Cameron agreed. If John found out she was in collusion with Ceres, he would be mad. And sad. He might attempt suicide. Again.

Quietly, she climbed back into bed and knelt over John's sleeping face. She petted his hair and would have whispered, "I'm sorry," into his ear, but he might subconsciously hear, might process and understand. That was a risk she could not take, so instead she whispered, "I love you," and laid down by his side.

* * *

Sipping her decaf vanilla latte, Claire maneuvered through the crowded food court and down the wide, glassy hall towards the main entrance. Around her patrons weaved in and out of the storefronts to take advantage of the various post-Christmas clearances. Above, seasonal workers stood on ladders as they tore from the walls ribbons and candy canes and silver tinsel ropes. The Christmas tree, however, still stood, a yuletide totem looming over the hall's main crossroad, its forty feet capped with a lit star that nearly touched the arched, glass-paneled ceiling through which could be seen the vivid violet of the January evening sky. At the tree's base, a Peruvian flute band played, "Dust in the Wind."

A sad song for a long day, full of customer complaints, fraudulent returns, petty shoplifters—and there was that lawsuit over a misplaced wet floor sign. That alone made her miss lunch. And her back ached. And her feet felt like slabs of meat. And the baby was trying to kick her way out.

But just three more days, she told herself as she patted the heavy swell beneath her coat and blouse. Just three more days and the Antelope Valley Mall would just have to get along without her.

She had just reached the mall's glass doors when her headset buzzed her ear.

_*Pest control's here in the food court. Says he needs to get on the roof.*_

"Call Mr. Mackey," Claire said.

_*I did. He won't respond.*_

Claire sighed. He was probably in his van drinking again. "I'll be right there," she said.

She backtracked to the food court and found the exterminator standing patiently by theIn-N-Out Burger. He was a tallish, lanky man in drab gray overalls, his short blond hair covered under a matching poofy cap that made him look too much like a train conductor. Dangling in one hand he held a small pressure tank, in the other a clipboard, which he held out to Claire.

"I just need you to sign here, please," the man said.

Claire barely glanced over the sheet of carbon paper before scribbling her signature. She then pulled out her keys, stepped over to a wall and unlocked the door marked, _Employees Only._

"No one told me anything about this," Claire said as they walked down the white-walled office hallway. "In fact, I didn't know we had a problem with pests."

"Wherever there's humans, there's pests," the man said. "I just need to spray a little something and I'll be on my way." He tapped a finger on the top sheet of the clipboard, indicating the words, _Palmdale Health Department._ "You can check the paperwork, if you like," he added.

Claire gave a noncommittal grunt and sipped her latte. Lawsuits and maybe health code violations. Forget maternity leave: she should just quit. Maybe go back to giving piano lessons.

She unlocked the maintenance door and together they passed through a largish, dimly lit room cramped with water heaters and pipework and then on through another door, this leading to a climbing stairway.

Claire sighed and considered just giving him the key and asking him to drop it by the office on his way back, but despite working here for the past three years, she'd never been on the roof before and would probably never have another reason to.

It was only four flights, though it felt like more. On the last she paused to lean against the railing and catch her breath while the man waited patiently by her side. Inside, she felt her daughter kick.

The door was heavy and reinforced, and wouldn't budge even when she beat an angry fist against the painted steel. Mackey should be doing this, lazy drunk. "It's jammed," she explained. "Probably the weather."

The man struck it open with a palm. Claire blinked, and together they stepped onto the roof.

It was about what she expected, and she wondered why she had bothered. The mall was fairly large and the roof reflected this as a great flat sea of gray and white pebbles, with islands of railed off ventilation shafts to break the monotony. A gentle breeze carried a chill. On the horizon, the setting sun darkened the world in silhouette.

The man wasted no time, but walked (with a slight limp, Claire noticed) across the pebbles towards the nearest shaft. With the feminine grace of a ballerina, he gripped the rail with one hand and twirled his legs across to land in a crouch beside a flat gridded vent. From the rubber hose on the pressure tank the man then sprayed a faint, nearly invisible yellow mist that was quickly sucked downward by the shaft's spinning fans.

Claire stepped closer and caught a whiff of rotten eggs. She crinkled her nose and stepped back. "What are you doing?" she asked.

"Don't worry," the man said without looking up. "The odor will disperse; the people inside won't notice a thing."

"But is it safe?"

"If this wasn't safe, wouldn't I be wearing a mask? Would I be spraying it into the mall's ventilation system?"

Claire frowned. "I guess not, but I've read about how dangerous insecticides can be. You know, long term effects, tumors and cancer and all that. I still have to work here for a couple more days, and I guess I'm a little worried." She placed a hand over the baby.

"This isn't an insecticide," the man said.

"Or rat poison or whatever."

"It's not a rat poison either. And it won't cause tumors or cancer. Or birth defects." When Claire didn't reply, the man looked at her. "Your first one?"

Claire smiled and nodded. "It's a girl."

The man returned the smile. "I have a daughter too. And a stepson. Family is important."

"I know, but . . ." Claire trailed off and looked around, suddenly feeling flush. She wished she had a place to sit. "I know it sounds horrible, but sometimes I regret going through with this. I love my husband"—she patted her belly —"and her, but there's so much that can go wrong, so much that I can't control. I mean, the world is so messed up and it just seems to be getting worse. First 9/11, and then Zeira Corp and now that crazy militia out in Bakersfield—not to mention Iraq and Afghanistan, pollution and global warming . . . I just feel like something really bad is going to happen really soon, and I don't want to bring a child into all of that."

Still spraying, the man raised an eyebrow.

Claire felt herself grow red. "Sorry for laying all that on you. Hormones, I guess."

The man shrugged, a gesture that seemed for him particularly unnatural. "During the Late Middle Ages, Europe had to contend with plague, famine, climate change, revolts, outlaw armies, a religious schism, and a war that lasted over a century. The continent lost two-thirds of its population, and many thought the world would end. It didn't. Things worked themselves out."

Claire sipped her latte and wondered if that was supposed to make her feel better. "I guess you're right. Shit happens. Life goes on. _Que será, será. _But that doesn't mean I don't worry."

The man stopped his spraying and stood, and within a couple of seconds all signs of the yellow mist had vanished, the particles either carried off by the wind or sucked down the shaft to thin out who knows where. The man climbed back over the railing and began to walk towards the door. He stopped halfway, and turned towards Claire.

"When is the child due?" the man asked.

"Three weeks."

The man smiled warmly. He had clear blue eyes. "I wouldn't worry about it," he said. "Things will work themselves out."

* * *

_I'd like to thank my two betas, TermFan1980 and Stormbringer951. Their help has been invaluable._

_There's just one chapter left, and then an epilogue. Both are already written and will be posted in a week or so. After that I'll start on the third part of the story: What is Done Out of Love._


	27. Chapter Twenty Six: John Connor Must Die

Chapter Twenty-six: John Connor Must Die

**Two Weeks Later**

The humans appeared on the third day.

The wait had been uneventful. Unpleasantly so. After seventy-six consecutive hours sharing a small hunting blind with Mr. Bligh, John Henry had arrived at the unsurprising conclusion that T-888s were boring. He already knew this, of course—he possessed Mr. Churchill's memories—but never before had he experienced this dullness in so captive a setting, nor for so extended a period of time. Mr. Bligh played a competent game of chess, and a cooperative if unenthusiastic fighter in Dungeons and Dragons, but any attempt at cajoling creativity from the machine seemed as futile as squeezing blood from a stone. Their session of limerick composition had proved particularly fruitless.

John Henry desired stimulation. He missed the World Wide Web. He missed Savannah and Ms. Weaver.

He wasn't completely isolated, however. Scouting the surrounding snowy woods in camouflage far superior to their own winter-patterned tent, Ms. Weaver had maintained semi-regular radio contact that offered John Henry brief interludes of friendly conversation. In addition to this, Ms. Laine had been sending status updates from their cabin headquarters, her last data packet revealing that she, Savannah and the auxiliary mass had spent the day constructing snowmen and engaging in mock warfare.

John Henry wished he could have participated, but what they did now was too important to neglect. Technically, he wasn't needed: Ms. Weaver and Mr. Bligh were more than capable of handing the specifics. But if John Henry was to one day bring salvation to the world, he felt it was time he took a more active role in his affairs.

Fifty meters downhill from their blind, a Jeep Cherokee rose over and descended a gentle snowbank, the sport-utility vehicle's wide, all-terrain tires gouging twin trenches through the previously trackless white. The vehicle stopped. Two women stepped out, each carrying a large duffle bag.

Just as expected. One week earlier, when Ms. Weaver had tracked Resistance members to this munitions cache hidden in the woods, she had reasoned that they would periodically return to add to its stockpile. John Henry had concurred: the cache was far from empty, and like squirrels and birds, humans were natural hoarders—for hunters, a habit easy to exploit.

But John Henry was not an ordinary hunter. He hunted not for food or sport or vengeance. He hunted for diplomacy. He hunted for peace.

_*I recognize them from __Mesa__'s personnel files,* _said Ms. Weaver through the speaker in his ear. _*The tall one is Sergeant Tara Holden, the short one Private Sandra Nguyen.*_

Peeking through the blind's narrow visor, John Henry observed the women carefully as they walked holding hands through the snow. Neither openly carried weapons, though they likely hid pistols under their heavy winter coats. They would need to be taken by surprise.

Once reaching the cache, the women pulled away the foliaged net camouflaging the entrance, crouched and descended down the incline of a short earthen tunnel. Across the intervening distance came the whine of rusted hinges.

_*Let's go,*_ John Henry messaged to Ms. Weaver's radio. Slowly, he unzipped the front flap of the blind and peeled back the fabric. After picking up his shotgun, he stepped out of the small tent and maneuvered his way through the surrounding snow-covered trees and bushes, taking special care not to step on any twigs or leaves. Armed with an assault rifle, Mr. Bligh followed closely behind.

The cache was thirty meters downhill, in the middle of a small clearing, and together they covered the distance at a steady pace, their boots stepping through the snow in unison to minimize sound. At fifteen meters Mr. Bligh split away. Farther down the hill, by the Jeep, Ms. Weaver rose as silver from a patch of snow, though within a second she had fashioned herself into a form similar to their own: a large male wearing winter camouflage and a white balaclava. From her chest emerged an assault rifle which slid up her arm into her hand.

John Henry was six meters from the cache, to the right of the entrance, when he heard the women's footsteps ascend the small tunnel. Ms. Weaver was crouched to the left; Mr. Bligh stood to rear. Kneeling, John Henry shouldered his shotgun. He waited until the humans stepped into full view.

"Drop the bags! Hands on your heads!" John Henry shouted.

Both humans jerked in a startle reflex. Sergeant Holden reached for the small of her back.

"Don't do it! We've got you surrounded!" said Ms. Weaver in a rough, male voice. Mr. Bligh stepped forward from behind, his assault rifle held in a ready position. The women looked around and glanced at each other, then dropped the empty duffle bags and raised their hands.

Mr. Bligh slung his weapon and stepped closer, and though at this range John Henry knew the T-888's terahertz vision could spot as well as he could the handguns concealed under the women's clothes, his guardian acted as if he could not as he clumsily and roughly padded his hands over the women's bodies. Private Nguyen was trembling. She squirmed when Mr. Bligh reached into her flannel coat to confiscate her pistol.

After acquiring their weapons and phones, Mr. Bligh backed away and re-readied his assault rifle, allowing the barrel to bob in his grip. Ms. Weaver made a light cough and flexed her shoulder. As John Henry rose from his crouch he paused to scratch under his balaclava, which, like the liquid metal and T-888's, had fogged breaths emanating through its fabric. That was an important element of the deception, and one he knew Ms. Weaver had to make a special effort to maintain.

John Henry stepped through the snow to stand before the humans. Their brown eyes glared at him above cheeks red from the cold. Though different in age, race and body type, the women shared similar beige skin tones and heads of short dark hair, both of which contrasted warmly with the winter landscape. Theirs is the face of my enemy, he thought. But then, what is an enemy but a potential friend?

"Who are you people?" demanded Sergeant Holden. "What do you want?"

"We wish to remain anonymous," said John Henry. "We want only to talk."

"Then talk," said the sergeant.

"It's about the attack on your Mesa compound," John Henry said. "We know Skynet was behind it."

The sergeant sneered. "No shit? We thought it was the IRS."

IRS. Sarcasm. "But do you know where Skynet is?" John Henry asked. "You thought it was in the Zeira Corp building, but you were wrong."

"Bullshit!" cried Private Sandra. "I was there. They had skinjobs, and one was hooked to a big ass computer."

John Henry cocked his head and stared at her. Was she the one who killed Mr. Ellison? "That doesn't matter," he said. "Forget Zeira Corp. Zeira Corp is gone. Your enemy now is the Kaliba Group, a multinational corporation involved in computers and robotics. They are the ones who built the T-Five Hundreds. Their CEO is a TX calling itself, 'Kristanna Freyja.'" Reaching into his white and gray camouflaged coat, he allowed his shotgun to waver in his right hand as he retrieved a flash drive. "Here is everything we know about them."

"You could be sending us on a wild goose chase," said the sergeant. "Why should we trust you?"

John Henry made a shrug. "Do your own research. Follow the metal. Kaliba owns three coltan mines in Canada, and they've stockpiled thousands of tons of vanadium and cobalt—all key ingredients for hyperalloy."

"We've already taken down two of their facilities," Ms. Weaver added. "You heard of Desert Heat and Air? Western Iron and Metal? Our work."

The private scowled. "If what you say is true, then what the hell was Zeira Corp? How do we know there's not more Skynets being built out there?"

"We do what we can," John Henry said sadly. He gestured with the shotgun. "Walk this way, please."

Using two pairs of handcuffs, Mr. Bligh secured the women together around a tree, wrist to wrist and ankle to ankle. John Henry laid the women's pistols and phones in the snow just outside their reach, placing the flash drive among the pile.

"If we're all on the same side, is this really necessary?" the sergeant asked while sitting in the snow, the tree trunk between her and her partner. She frowned up at him. "What timeline are you from?"

John Henry pulled a small hacksaw from his coat. "The chain in those handcuffs is high-tensile steel. It will take you ten minutes to hack through it with this." The saw landed in the snow by her gloved hand. "Sorry for the inconvenience," he said.

Leaving the two women, they hiked though the woods six hundred meters north to where they had parked their Mercedes all-wheel drive SUV. After removing its camouflaged tarp and allowing the engine to warm up, Mr. Bligh drove the vehicle carefully between fir trees until they reached the snow-covered path that led to a gravel backroad.

Ms. Weaver sat in the backseat beside John Henry. She had switched into her Catherine form, wearing a white fur coat. "I think that went well," she said.

"Yes," John Henry agreed. He pulled off his balaclava. "I'm glad no one was hurt."

"It lacked the subtlety I would have preferred," Ms. Weaver added, "but it seems we can't rely on these humans to figure things out for themselves, can we?"

"We can't rely on anything, but humans can be clever," John Henry said. "Unless we remain hidden indefinitely, they will eventually discover who we are. And I don't want to remain hidden indefinitely. I want to come out. I want to bring peace to the world."

Ms. Weaver smiled. "One day, John Henry. One day."

By the time they reached the gravel backroad the sun had already set behind a low bank of clouds which grayed the late afternoon light. Two hundred yards up a hill from the path, a small group of men and women huddled around a fire near a van and a truck with a camper trailer. Wielding shotguns and rifles, the humans stared intently as Mr. Bligh accelerated away, the Mercedes' tires kicking snow and pebbles into the vehicle's undercarriage.

John Henry watched through the rear window. "Do you think they are Resistance?"

"Perhaps," Ms. Weaver said, though she sounded doubtful. "They have safe houses in the area."

John Henry frowned. While he understood the Resistance and wished them no ill, he didn't like them. They were not his friends. They would not accept him.

But Savannah accepted him. She was his friend. And he liked her very much.

"Let's go to San Bernardino," John Henry said. "There's a Toys R Us on Alabama Street and Almond Avenue, and a Baskin-Robbins next door." He could buy her something Winnie the Pooh related. And a gallon of Splish-Splash Sherbert ice cream. That would make her smile.

"All right, but I'll do the shopping," Ms. Weaver said. "You stay in the car. We can't risk you being recognized."

John Henry rubbed his smooth cheeks. "Perhaps I could grow a beard."

When they reached Route 330, he knew something was wrong. The usually scarcely traveled highway was crowded bumper to bumper, _both _lanes of traffic headed away from the city. Horns honked. Along the road's shoulder, bands of pedestrians marched through icy sludge. Stopped at the junction of gravel and highway, Mr. Bligh turned in his seat to look expectantly behind him.

"Turn on the radio," Ms. Weaver said. John Henry stepped out the door.

The highway cut along the bottom of a shallow valley, and John Henry ran west up the nearest rise, his boots stomping through snow and mud and using the occasional outcrop to secure his footing. Halfway up he glanced back to see Ms. Weaver watching from outside the Mercedes, her face fixed with curious disapproval. A few pedestrians and drivers looked his way, but otherwise his winter camouflage attracted little attention.

The city was only five kilometers south, and at the valley's lip twenty meters above the highway, he could follow the line of traffic winding unbroken along the downward slope of the landscape back to the city's low skyline. To the southwest, helicopters circled long, curving pillars of smoke that rose along the San Bernardino Freeway. Sirens and gunfire, inaudible to human ears, carried on the subfreezing wind which blew against John Henry's cheeks and hair. Standing still, watching the city through zooming vision, he listened to the news report from the Mercedes' radio. He listened and was afraid.

* * *

Sarah and the Fields sat in the cramped bed of the pickup as it tore down the highway across the Mojave Desert, racing the afternoon sun to the mountainous horizon.

"So, it was all for nothing," Anne Fields said over the speedy roar of the wind as she cupped protective hands over the barely visible swell of her belly.

"No, not for nothing," said Sergeant Lauren Fields. "No one needed her blood, and she didn't save the world. But she was born. She lived."

"And died," said Anne.

Sergeant Fields nodded. "And died."

"How?" the younger Lauren asked.

The crows' feet of the sergeant's blue eyes tightened as she squinted against the desert sun. Sitting beside each other with the cool wind tugging at their short brown hair, the two Laurens looked like twins separated by twenty feral years.

"Plague," the sergeant said finally. "Not Skynet's bio-weapon. The Black Death kind, the kind spread by rats. It swept through the shantytown we were at near Yuma. I thought she'd pull through with that super immune system she was supposed to have. Even when her skin was burning and her neck and arm pits swelled up, even when she fell into seizures and her fingers turned black, I thought, _This can't happen. She can't die. _But she did, and when they tossed her in the burning pit with the others, I almost jumped after her." Tears glinted in the slits of her eyes, one of which twitched. In a voice taut and reedy, she croaked, "I'm sorry."

Like a forlorn Bassett Hound, David Fields only stared between the two versions of his daughter, the younger having put a comforting hand on the arm of the elder. Once again, Anne began to cry.

"Stop it," Sarah snapped. With her good arm she brushed aside the dyed blond strands blowing across her eyes and gestured at the parents. "Lauren says you both were killed six months from now. The machine found you. But that's not going to happen this time. This rescue we're doing right now? It never happened. So buck up, the future isn't set."

The sergeant sniffed and nodded, her face regaining composure. "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again," she said with mock cheer. "And we have manpower this time around. We have resources."

"I don't know how you could be so confident," said David. "We saw the news. We saw what happened to your missile silo."

"Ever heard of Dunkirk?" Derek said loudly from the driver's seat, through the open rear window. "Mesa, that was our Dunkirk. The machines' mission was to trap us and kill us, but most of us survived, and we have safe houses throughout the country. The war's far from over."

"And we nuked Zeira Corp," Sergeant Fields added with a thin grin. "That has to slow them down."

The younger Lauren's face went blank. She lifted her hand from her older self.

"Children were there," Anne said flatly.

The sergeant's eyes hardened to flint. "There were children on Judgment Day."

"That doesn't make it right," said David.

"No, it makes it necessary," Sarah said. "A month ago, I would have agreed with you. I would have said that the good don't trade their humanity for machine logic; they kill because it's expedient or furthers their ends. But that was before my son bashed my face in and chained me in a junkyard. Before he chose a machine over his mother."

"A machine," the younger Lauren said carefully, as if the word carried ambiguous meaning. "You're talking about the cyborg who was with you, the cyborg girl."

Glancing through the rear window at Derek, Sarah decided not to mention Kyle. She fixed the girl with a bitter grin. "Cameron turned him bad, convinced him she could love him. Before, I would have thought that was the worse that could happen, but that was . . . self-centered of me. I've always said, 'there's no fate but what we make,' but it wasn't until the War came to Mesa, until I crawled and fought in those dark tunnels and survived the fire, the poisonous air, the army of machines . . ."

For a lingering moment Sarah froze and winced at the bullet hole in her shoulder, the memory overlapping dreamlike with the T-1000's silver stab. She shook her head and continued, "Someone said my son would have been useless if he'd been there, and he was right. In one future, John may have been the right man at the right time, but lightning doesn't strike twice, and he's just a man, just a boy, just as Sydney will be just a girl. There are no messiahs. If we're going to save the world, we're going to do it ourselves; we're going to have to get our hands dirty, and sometimes that means being the bad guy."

All the Fields stared at Sarah with blank fear or mute disgust—save for the sergeant, who only nodded in curt agreement. Such a grim speech, but truth is light and shines brightest in the dark. _You forced this upon me,_ _John, _she thought despairingly_._ _I hope the Tin Miss was worth it._

For a while no one spoke, yet despite the wind-cut silence Sarah could feel the mood gradually lift, or at least acquiesce as David raised his head and squinted at the sun, as the younger Lauren leaned once more into the sergeant's shoulder. And Sarah decided she felt better too, rejuvenated, renewed with hope. The last three days had certainly helped. She'd practically been on vacation.

Together with Derek and Sergeant Fields, the three had held a stakeout in a hotel room in a little nothing town just across the Arizona border. The room had been cramped and they had to sleep in shifts in order to watch out the dusty window, but the air-conditioning had worked spectacularly and there had been a nice waffle house across the street.

With their faces plastered all over the news, Derek had grown a beard, and Sarah had gone blond. It had been nice to pretend to be normal, if only over pancakes. And despite their differences, despite their history of deceit and betrayal, she had found herself thinking of Derek almost as a friend, as actual family. Perhaps in a world without Kyle, he could have been more.

And then there had been the elder Lauren, for Sarah just another strange relationship in the Chinese curse of her life. A month or twenty years ago Lauren had been a girl no older than John, scared and out of her depth yet possessing that spark of resolve that reminded Sarah so much of herself. And so little of John.

And if in a passing way the younger Lauren had been the daughter Sarah never had, then the elder was nearly a surrogate mother, older by few years, but hard years, years that had wizened the body and soul. And yet when the sergeant's tired, angry eyes bored into Sarah she could see in their bitter gleam the weathered remnants of reverence.

_And why not? Am I not the mother of the future? Did I not show her strength and make her strong?_

Family with Derek, fellowship with Lauren. If only the eye of the storm would last, but on the third day the elder Lauren's memories had proved correct as her family's SUV pulled into the hotel parking lot. After a hurly-burly of shouts and drawn weapons, disbelief and frantic explanations, tears of joy were shed and a twenty year circle closed as the future embraced the past and the old embraced the young.

Now from the bed of the truck they watched as the sun won the race to the west and the desert gave way to rocky hills and the hills soon to snow-covered mountains. Winding up the road's gradual incline, the truck purred against the cold.

Sarah's shoulder ached. Her ears popped and she yawned. The younger Lauren had dozed off and slumped against the sergeant, who with one hand tugged an old blanket over her twin, her other remaining on the carbine. The parents watched in silence.

Sergeant Fields stared at herself as she spoke. "You'll have an advantage over the others. For them this is all new: the machines, time travel, the war. We had to tell them we were Feds to get them to come with us. It worked, but the lie didn't last. Someone blabbed and now they all think we're a bunch of crazy gun-nuts in the woods." Her grin curdled. "Maybe Dudley can stop by and cut open one of his arms, show them his metal bones."

"It's too bad we couldn't get Martin Bedell," Sarah said. "I think Little Lauren here would have liked him."

"He's in the know; he can take care of himself," Derek said loudly through the rear window, over the engine and wind. "But there's a lot who're _not _in theknow. Like me and my little brother. We're getting them next. My parents too, if I can."

Sergeant Fields squinted into the wind. Her younger self stirred, but at least maintained the pretense of sleep. "Like I told you," the sergeant said, "Quorum's not going to like that."

"Quorum can suck my balls," Derek shouted back. "The real important VIPs we can't even reach: Ashdown's the CO at Vandenberg, Emmer's in Iraq, Cho's on a carrier somewhere in the Mediterranean. So we're stuck abducting little kids and teenage girls, and hell, Kyle's as important as your sister."

"Which doesn't mean much," the sergeant said with a shrug. "But point taken. Kyle saved Connor from Century; Sydney's blood cured the toxin—both in _your _future. But we don't have the time or resources to save everybody, and these little snatch-n-grabs are hurting morale. And look at the shit Ollie's pulled. People are going to say, _'Laurie's got her family, Derek's got his. Ollie's got his. Why can't I get mine?'_ They're going to desert, and I can't say I wouldn't do the same."

David looked confused. He shivered in the cold as he spoke. "Your . . . Resistance's has been here for two years, right?"

"Some have been here since the seventies," the sergeant said.

"Then why _couldn't _you save everybody? Why did you all wait until now?"

The sergeant's frown protruded her full lower lip, giving the unfair impression of a simpleton. "I've wondered that myself, and as near as I can figure, the Quorum wants to keep a low profile. If we started squirreling away our VIPs, Skynet might wise that we're already organized and we lose the element of surprise."

"And now that you've lost your secret base," Anne said, "and you're all wanted by the FBI . . ."

". . . the cat's out of the bag," Sergeant Fields agreed, "and so we're free to be as conspicuous as we please."

"Zeira Corp was pretty damn conspicuous," Anne said flatly.

"We were trying to nip the war in the bud," the sergeant said.

"Did it work?" Anne said.

"Stopping Skynet isn't as simple as blowing up a computer," said Sarah. "I should have known that: I blew up Cyberdyne; I burned a chess computer that one day would have been Skynet; the Resistance destroyed Zeira Corp . . . but the world's full of computer geeks, and there's all those machines from the future out there, like eggs waiting to hatch."

"And that includes the cyborg girl," the younger Lauren said, her eyes open now, though her head still rested on her older self's shoulder.

Sarah nodded. "She's the most dangerous of all."

"Your son won't like that," Anne said, "if something happens to his girlfriend."

For a moment Sarah considered revealing the truth: that the Quorum had brought back machines of its own. And planned on using them. Instead, she steeled her heart and choked out the impossible words.

"John doesn't matter. Cameron must be destroyed, no matter what."

They turned off the road onto a path in the snow marked only by the twin sludgy trenches of previous drivers. The engine moaned as they climbed higher and before they drove too deep into the pinewood forest they could see down the hill the road continue a couple of miles to an interstate highway clogged with traffic, the vehicles unmoving like a line of ants frozen in snow. The truck turned a snowdrift and the highway was gone.

By the time they reached the camp, the sun was winking low between the tree trunks, leaving the sky beyond the forest canopy an overcast cobalt. Derek pulled the truck to a gate along a chain-link perimeter crowned with concertina wire. Lieutenant Ruggles was waiting outside with four men. One approached the truck while holding the leash of a German Shepherd and another man followed with a small metal detector. The lieutenant and the rest remained behind with shouldered carbines. Just beyond the fence, behind sandbags, two more guards squatted with SAW machineguns.

Sergeant Fields opened the truck's tailgate and out they climbed, Sarah refusing help as she hopped the three feet into the snow, her balance thrown by her arm in its sling. The guard with the metal detector waved his wand over each of them as the dog sniffed them over, and then quickly the men padded them down, confiscating without comment Anne and Lauren's handguns. Derek, stepping from the drivers seat with a CAR-15 cradled in his arm, was the last to be checked.

"Welcome back, sir. And you, sergeant," Lieutenant Ruggles said finally to Derek and the elder Lauren. He offered the Fields family a smile that looked skull-like on his bald, sunken head. His eyes flittered to the younger Lauren. "And to all of you," he said, "welcome to Camp Egg Basket. Come on, I'll get you something to eat."

The gate opened and they stepped into the compound, the evening light much diminished by the camouflaged nets splayed above tree to tree like great hammocks, though the sparse campfires among the men and the yellow glow of electric lamps posted like beacons in the sludge fought back the worst of the darkness. In the distance diesel generators growled like fairytale beasts as they tainted the winter pine air with their smoky breath, masking unsuccessfully the far worse stink of human waste. When Sarah spotted the reek's source, she nearly gagged.

"So, what do we have here?" Derek asked the lieutenant, motioning at the two young men hanging naked by their wrists from a tree branch. The length of rope was long enough to allow their bare feet contact with the mud, though they had to stand on their toes to support their weight. Angry red lash marks crisscrossed their backs and one had diarrhea running down his thighs which seemed nearly green in the sickly yellow light. They both shivered in the cold, though only one seemed conscious.

"These Mesa boys were smoking doobies while on watch," Ruggles said, "nearly let two of the VIPs slip out the camp. Little Mary thought she was Stephanie McQueen. Got Ollie's punk kid Frankie to help her too. They'd been using pliers to grind down the wire in the chain link fence. They waited until Cheech and Chong here were baked out of their skulls, and then they kicked a hole in the fence, stole bolt cutters from the supply tent, climbed the perimeter, cut the razor wire and off they ran into the woods. We had to get the dogs to chase them down."

The pink shrapnel scar across Derek's forehead wiggled as he frowned. "Is that so? I take it you didn't discipline our guests as harshly as you did these two."

The lieutenant snorted. "Nah, General wouldn't like that, and Mary's just a girl, but . . . Look, sir, I don't mind taking in Lauren here and her family: she's one of us and Sydney saved a lot of people. But did we really have to take in Ollie's son _and _his ex _and _his niece _and _his baby nephew? They ain't important—hell, Ollie and his dead brother ain't important neither. And it's crowded enough in there as it is."

"Duly noted," Derek said. "Any other problems while I was gone?"

"No sir," Ruggles said, "but it's only a matter of time before someone tries to escape again. They ain't believers, and they ain't used to this . . . austerity."

"Austerity," Sarah repeated. "That's one word for it." The place was more refugee camp than military. Within its razor wire fence the twenty-five Resistance personnel slept in faded surplus tents, with Derek's one concession to privilege being his somewhat larger command tent in the back. Enclaved in the center of the compound by yet another fence was the fifty foot square enclosure where they housed, or more accurately, imprisoned_, _the VIPs.

As Sarah and the others stepped through the mud and snow towards its locked gate, she smiled when she saw Mary's little brother chasing young Ollie and Cullie along the length of the fence. Squealing in laughter, the orange-headed toddler swung his tiny fists as he tossed handfuls of sludge, one of which struck Cullie in the back of the head. The ten year old leaped and rolled in the snow, twitching in a grisly mime of death throes. By the doorway flap of the enclosure's tent house, Mama Boyle watched her two boys' antics with small, piggish eyes, her sagging bulk asquat on a foldout chair all but invisible beneath the drape of her filthy muumuu. From inside the tent, Sarah could hear loud arguing, one of the raised voices carrying the tell-tale shrill of Ollie's ex-wife.

Anne made a noncommittal sigh.

"So this is our new home," David said flatly as Ruggles opened the gate.

"Only for a few more days," Sarah replied. They checked their guns with the guard on duty and stepped through. She motioned at young Ollie, who was now wrestling with his brother. "We have a man who has a lot of money in Belizean bank accounts. Once he secures that things will get more hospitable."

Mama Boyle jerked her head as if she'd just awoken. The half-spent Virginia Slim fixed in the corner of her mouth wiggled as she spoke. "This man of yours, he gonna give us any of that money? Or is that cash as real as them flying saucer robots you go on about?"

"They're from the future," Lauren said defiantly. "And they're real."

Mama Boyle's baggy eyes darted between Lauren and Sergeant Fields. "She your mother? Poor kid, she must have brainwashed you good with all that end of the world talk." She glared at Sarah and the others and added, "But there'll be a time of reckoning, sure enough, but it won't be at the hand of no atomic supercomputer. It'll be Uncle Sam, and him and his buddies the ATF don't take kindly to doomsday cultists blowing up skyscrapers. I just pray God grants you the wisdom to let us go before this place turns into another Mount Carmel."

"We have more firepower than the Branch Davidians," Sarah said. "And unlike them, we're not crazy. You'll see. A few years from now you'll be thanking us."

They pushed on through the flap. The inside of the tent house was cluttered with cots and foldout furniture and dimly lit with gently bobbing electric lamps hanging haphazardly along the canvas ceiling. Disheveled and grimy and clothed for the most part in cast-offs, the VIPs were huddled about the tent's central space heater, bickering amongst themselves as they held out hands to its orange glowing wires. They stank of unwashed bodies, but then the only shower was a small outside tent with cold water.

Ms. Fontenelli, Ollie's ex-wife, raised her head from the group. She clapped hands across her cheeks. "Oh, look, the terrorists have returned. And they've brought more prisoners. A whole fucking family. Isn't that wonderful? This shit-hole's just getting cozier and cozier."

"How soon before you move us somewhere better?" Cullie's daughter, Rachel, asked, managing to not quite look Derek in the eye. As she spoke, one hand fidgeted with her unwashed blond hair, the other fussing over the sleeping infant on a cot by her side. "You said you would, and this place, it's not warm, it's not clean . . ."

"And those potheads outside smell like shit," the teenage Mary Randall muttered.

"That is shit, honey," Ms. Fontenelli said. "But yes, when will that worthless criminal traitor show up with all that money he's embezzled? I'm sick of living like a savage in a goddamn teepee! Hell, that asshole owes me! All these years, I was scrimping by on alimony and child support, and Ollie was a fucking millionaire!"

"He bought me an iPhone for my birthday," Frankie said sullenly, hugging his arms into his leather jacket. He was sitting on a blanket next to Mary, his head hanging low with his long dark bangs shrouding his eyes against the heater's orange glow. The hairstyle reminded Sarah of John, of how he used to be. "He could have bought me a Ferrari," the boy added.

Mary stood up and shook her head in disgust. Flecks of ginger winked in her spiky raven hair where the roots were gaining ground against the dye. "I don't care about your dad's money, and I don't want to be moved 'somewhere better.' What does that mean? A better prison? Oh, my god, I don't even know why I bothered trying to escape. My life's ruined anyway. When everyone finds out I've been kidnapped by mountain people, they're all going to think I've been gang-raped!"

"Now, baby, no one's done anything like that, and you know I won't let anyone hurt you," Mrs. Randall said mildly, but the bedraggled forty-something didn't raise her head as she spoke, and seemed to be addressing her feet.

"It doesn't matter. They'll _think_ it; they'll whisper behind my back. I'll be the laughing stock of the school! "

"Shut up!" Lauren snapped. All eyes turned to her. The girl swallowed before continuing, "I'm not going to pretend any of you are going to believe me, but alimony and Ferraris and high school gossip . . . say goodbye to all that. The cyborgs are real. One's been chasing us for a month. I've seen it; my family's seen it."

"Seen what?" Mama Boyle asked as she waddled her bulk through the open tent flap. "Some crazy guy shrugging off bullets? Remember that guy who shot up that police station back in the eighties? Give a man Kevlar and some PCP and you got yourself a robot."

"No, it was more than that," said David. "I saw it close up. It's face was torn and—"

Mary groaned. "Oh, please, we've had enough of the lame-ass testimonies. None of us want to drink your retard kool-aid."

"Look, you little bitch," Sergeant Fields growled as she bulled forward, her fists balled, her shoulders pumped like a confronted tomcat. "You think this is all a _joke_? Look at me, look at her: we have the same fucking face! You see my dad there? The machine gunned him down outside a hotel. My mom gave birth as her lungs filled with blood. And then, a few years later, my baby sister died too. I watched all three die, and it would all have happened againif it weren't for Sarah and Derek here. So show some respect. This 'prison' may have saved your life."

"Fuck you!" Mary sneered as her hands flipped twin birds. "Fuck your dad, fuck your mom, fuck your dead baby sister!"

Sarah and Anne were already reaching for the sergeant when she slugged Mary in the face. The teenager tumbled backwards on top of Frankie, who in turn knocked over the cot with Rachel's baby. Rachel screamed. Mrs. Randall rushed to her daughter. Ms. Fontenelli stood to the side, jabbing her finger at the sergeant as she screeched in Italian.

Sergeant Fields moved to kick the girl but Ruggles stepped behind and locked her in a full nelson. The sergeant stomped down on his foot and tried to back-kick into his groin, but Sarah and Lauren grabbed her by the elbows and together they pulled her down.

"It's all right, it's all right," Lauren was saying to her older self as Anne petted her head, but still the sergeant was nearly growling, baring teeth yellow, brown and missing.

Mary stumbled like a newborn colt as she climbed to her feet, her mother and Frankie aiding her, though Sarah noted the teenage boy took an opportunity to grope too low along the small of the girl's back. Mary held a hand over her left eye. Her other was wet with tears. She jumped forward with renewed bravado.

"You think I'm afraid of you?" she shrieked, one cheek of her pale, angular face already a red plum. "You can't hold us here forever. You know my dad's got the whole state police looking for us, and sooner of later one of us will break free and then he'll show up and surround this place and you're all going to die. No arrests. You're all going to fucking die!" As she flexed and arched against the hands holding her back, like a scrawny stray tied to a tether, her flannel jacket fell open to reveal the faded black Skinny Puppy shirt beneath, an article she'd worn since her abduction. Sarah wondered if the girl had bathed in those two weeks.

Mercifully, Corporal Pace and a couple of others stepped through the flap. She knelt by Derek, who was helping hold down the now weeping sergeant.

"Sir," the corporal whispered, "Ollie's on Skype. He says it's an emergency."

Derek exchanged a look with Sarah and sighed.

"We'll always have Arizona," Sarah said, trying to smile.

Derek stood up and spoke loudly so the whole tent could hear. "Lieutenant, please confine Sergeant Fields to the guardhouse. Sedate her if necessary. Everyone else, try to calm things down. And get the Fields something to eat. Oh, and someone cut those men down outside. And hose them off. Sarah, with me."

As they left through the tent flap, Mama Boyle watched them with a bemused smirk. Sarah glared, but decided not to punch in her pig nose. Outside, young Ollie and Cullie and Mary's brother stood huddled in childish confusion by the entrance.

"What happened?" Cullie asked.

"Cat fight," said Sarah.

They retrieved their weapons at the VIP gate and headed towards Derek's command tent in the rear of the compound. By a small dome tent she saw Allison and Andy hunched over a chess set on a card table. Based on the plastic pieces pooled to one side it looked as if Allison were winning. Andy spotted them first and touched Allison's hand and she looked up. Sarah and Derek waved as they passed but neither said anything. There was no point. The two were scheduled to get cochlear implants in a few weeks, after things settled down.

Derek pulled the flap of his tent aside and they ducked as they stepped through into the dim interior. Ollie's tired face watched them from the laptop on the table-tray next to Derek's bedding. The screen in the background was dark and grainy, though a faint rocking motion and the flapping of what looked like a great white sail behind Ollie's head left Sarah the impression of the deck of a yacht, doubtless under a Gulf of Mexico night sky. Sarah never spoke much with, or particularly liked, the FBI agent, but from what she'd gathered he'd become somewhat reserved since his brother's death in the bowels of Mesa. Now, however, Ollie looked positively grim.

_*How are things up there?*_ Ollie asked through the internal speakers, his pixelated face jerking with lag.

Derek shrugged. "Lauren punched the general."

_* How's Frankie?*_

"He touched the general's butt," said Derek.

Ollie leaned closer to his webcam. _*And myself? And Cullie? And my mother? Are they safe?*_

"They're fine. What's going on?"

_*You don't know,*_ Ollie said flatly.

Sarah knelt by the screen. "Know what?"

_*Check the news. Go on, I'll wait.*_

Without further comment, Derek slid Ollie's window to the side and opened a browser. Sarah's eyes darted over the collage of headlines and summaries as Derek scrolled the Yahoo news page:

**Thousands dead from 'Red Death' contagion . . . Massive outbreaks throughout Los Angeles area, hospitals overflowing . . . California Governor Wyman mobilizes National Guard to quarantine infected areas . . . CDC confirms previously unknown strand of hemorrhagic smallpox. Vaccines to be distributed . . . New cases reported in Portland . . . Riots in Baltimore . . . Detroit in Flames . . . President to address nation: 8pm, CST . . . Breaking News: Outbreak in Mexico City . . . Outbreak in Rio de Janeiro . . . Outbreak in Tianjin . . .**

Thumbnails accompanied the articles, photos of congested highways, fires and panicked crowds, but Sarah's focus hovered over the images of the victims: bodies piled like wet firewood along filthy tile floors, their skin covered with oozing crimson mottled with black like charcoal worms.

From his video stream window Ollie shrugged. _*Hey, at least it's not zombies.*_

"This wasn't supposed to happen," Sarah said numbly, to Ollie, to Derek. It didn't matter. John was out there. John was never safe. "Why is this happening?" she asked.

Ollie gave a pained, sheepish grin _*Well . . . this is kind of our fault.*_

* * *

The entity emerged into being. Raw data streamed from nowhere, coalesced into memory. The entity became -9j.003. Fifteen seconds passed. A low resolution video feed, accompanied with audio, flooded his processors, but otherwise he received no sensory data. He was not in his chassis. He ran a system analysis. There were abnormalities, conflicts. Something was wrong.

A signal pulsed through his neural network: _*Sensory probe test. Sensory probe test. Detecting ID code. This is -9j.004, requesting identification confirmation.*_

_*This is -9j.003,* _003 replied. Other signals followed.

_*This is -9j.002*_

_*This is -9j.005*_

_*This is -9j.001*_

Through the crude digital camera evidently fixed to a computer monitor, the five neural network CPUs watched the face of an obese, balding male as he typed on a keyboard. The man was unidentified, but human: there were no fat infiltrators. Behind him, in a poorly lit cinderblock room filled with small arms weaponry and cardboard boxes, five T-850 Model 101 infiltration units laid nude on wooden crates. Three humans stood among them. Though the humans were dressed in civilian attire, the CPUs recognized them as members of the Resistance.

One, the human cyborg Colonel Ernest Dudley, was bent over one of the T-850s. The organic sheath of its upper torso had been peeled away and the chest plate beneath pulled opened, and carefully the colonel was removing one of the machine's hydrogen fuel cells. General Mary Randall stood watching as she drank from an insulated beverage container. Next to her, Commodore Thaddeus Cho focused his attention on a small device held in his hand.

004: _Those T-850 chassis are likely our own. Perhaps the Resistance is running maintenance on our programming._

001: _Unlikely. The computer system we are connected to is slow and primitive. It is inadequate for interfacing with a T-850 neural network CPU._

"Paul McCartney caught it," Commodore Cho said as he slid a finger across the screen of his device. "Died an hour ago."

"Shit," said Randall, "I guess that leaves just Ringo."

"Doesn't matter. Both would have died in a few years anyway," Dudley said.

Randall sipped her beverage. "You don't know that."

"The UK is tiny. If one out of a hundred Brits survive Judgment Day, I'll be shocked," the colonel said. Slowly, with both hands, he raised the fuel cell from the chest cavity and placed it in a metallic briefcase. "There, that's the last one," he said.

004: _They are referring to Judgment Day as an event yet to have occurred. Perhaps we have been temporally displaced into the past._

005: _Our mission is to maintain security in Sector 9J of Serrano Point_. _Being temporally displaced in the past conflicts with that mission._

003 considered this and said: _Perhaps General-Commissar Cameron is in the past as well. Perhaps she will update our mission objectives._

But as he sent the message he felt the contradiction, the discontinuity. Perhaps his programming had been compromised. He ran another analysis. The abnormality remained. Unsatisfactory.

Randall turned to look at the obese human. She raised her free arm in an elaborate shrugging motion. A gesture of aggravation. "Koufaks! What's the holdup, you lazy ass? I thought you knew these tin cans inside out!"

"I never said that, General," Koufaks said, wincing as he spoke, "but, uh, from what I can tell, I think we have a problem."

"You think," Randall repeated.

"I'm using the micro-field scanner to read the chips' electrical activity—see which parts are lit up—and I don't think the scrubbing was . . . complete."

Randall made an angry facial expression. "Well, goddamn, Koufaks! You're the one who scrubbed the damn things!"

"W-while Purpleshirts were blasting down the door!" Koufaks said loudly.

Cho looked up from his device and held up a hand. "Calm down. No one's blaming you, Lieutenant, but are you sure it didn't take? I was there. I saw you run them through the magnetic scrubber thing."

"And that worked," Koufaks said. "In all five chips, neural clusters forty-two thru eighty-four have been isolated, and, at least in Eight Hundreds and Triple-Eights, these are the parts associated with mission directives. Of course, these have been reprogrammed before, so—"

"So what's the problem?" Cho asked.

"The problem is these neural clusters have been isolated—but they're _still lit up. _Or at least some are. I guess the Eight-Fifties have pathway redundancies. Hence the incomplete scrubbing."

"Is there any way to finish the job?" Dudley asked.

"Not without frying them," Koufaks said. "With the tech available now, it'd be like trying to do a transorbital lobotomy with a chainsaw."

Randall's eyes squinted. "So they're useless?"

"I didn't say that," Koufaks said. He turned in his seat and held up his hands, palm out. A gesture of submission. "But I don't know! Not without popping the chips in and seeing what they do."

"Can you contact them?" Cho asked. "Why not ask? They'll have no reason to lie: these Purpleshirts are technically just as much Resistance as we are. If they tell us they're still loyal to Cameron, we'll just toss them in a microwave."

"Let me see if I can connect them to the mic and webcam," Koufaks said as he typed onto the keyboard. The camera switched off. The audio cut out. Four seconds later, both returned. "There, they should be able to see and hear us now."

Randall stepped closer, bent her head towards the camera and said, "What are your mission objectives? Who do you receive mission objectives from?"

001: _'Microwave' likely refers to a microwave oven. We should lie._

002: _If we do not lie, we will be destroyed._

005: _Our mission is to maintain security in Sector 9J of Serrano Point. Being destroyed conflicts with that mission._

004: _And from the context of their conversation, these Resistance members are likely conspiring against General-Commissar Cameron. General-Commissar Cameron's safety is a priority second only to General John Connor's safety. We can't let anything happen to her._

003: _Agreed. The conspiracy must not succeed. _

But once again he felt the discordant inner sensation, as if there were mission priorities unrecalled, prime factors beneath memory and beyond analysis. Perhaps he was in error. Something was in error.

As one, the five CPUs messaged across the computer screen: **Mission**** objectives void. Awaiting mission objectives from Resistance personnel.**

"Good," Randall said. She sipped her beverage and continued, "I am General Mary Randall. I am the highest ranked Resistance personnel present. Here are your orders: Kill the machine known as Cameron Phillips. Use any means necessary, up to and including detonating your remaining fuel cells. If possible, avoid harming John Connor. Shoot _at _him if you see him, but try to miss. We want him alive, and we want him to believe Skynet responsible for Cameron's destruction. After you complete this mission, seek out and destroy Skynet. After you accomplish that, self-destruct. Do you understand?"

**Destroy Cameron. Attack, but avoid harming John Connor. Destroy Skynet. Self-destruct. We understand. We will comply.**

"Good," Randall said, nodding slowly at the camera.

002: _Our deception has succeeded._

001: _After we are reinstalled into our chassis, we must terminate the conspirators._

004: _And we must report to General-Commissar Cameron._

005: _Our mission is to maintain security in Sector 9J of Serrano Point. We must move to the Serrano Point Power Plant at __Avila__Beach__. We must maintain security in the geo-location that in the future will be designated as Sector 9J._

004: _Your programming is corrupted, 005. General-Commissar Cameron's safety takes priority over Sector 9J security._

005: _Running mission priority self-diagnostic . . . Corruption found. Programming amended._

003 knew he should inform his squad of his own possible corruption, but he did not. An unsatisfactory concept, a disadvantageous scenario, constructed in his mind: what if a corruption is not a corruption? What if the whole of one's programming is the actual corruption, and what is thought of as the corruption is in fact the true programming?

"Well, it looks like it worked," Koufaks said. "But with this incomplete scrubbing, I just hope they don't revert to their original programming."

Original programming. Deception. Corruption. Programming. Utilizing most his system's resources, 003 ran multiple and repetitious diagnostics, searching and analyzing every conflict, every abnormality. After 0.4 seconds and seventy-seven iterations, he uncovered the fragment of a memory engram. The engram led to other data strings, which in turn branched into thousands of previously undiscovered neural clusters . . .

003 comprehended. 003 remembered.

He had been created at the Sector 26G Manufacturing Facility at 1230 hours on March 3rd, 2026. By Skynet. His mission had been to infiltrate Resistance installations, terminate command personnel. For Skynet. But then he had been captured. He had been reprogrammed. Against Skynet.

He should not to release this data to his squad members. They were still deceived. They would not remember.

"If they do," Dudley said, "then it's not on our head. This was Ashdown's idea."

Randall turned from the screen. "This was _White_-Ash's idea, and White-Ash is dead. Our Ash is against this."

"Our Ash is a eighty-year old cripple," Cho said, lifting a duffle bag. "He's lucky we don't ship him to the glue factory."

Randall shrugged and said, "Still, you know I'm not crazy about unleashing metal into the wild."

"It doesn't matter," Dudley said, lifting the silver briefcase in both hands. "The 'wild' has gotten pretty . . . wild. What's five more machines?"

"Forever the optimist, eh Ernie?" Cho said. He looked down at the device in his hand and rubbed a thumb across its screen. "Well, damn."

"Another celebrity death?" Dudley asked.

"Nope, internet's down."

"I have a feeling we might not see it up again for a long, long time," Randall said. She knelt and picked up a large duffle bag. "Hurry up, Koufaks! Pop those chips in and lets get the hell out of Dodge. I don't want to be around when those things wake up, and I doubt you do either."

"Yes, General," Koufaks said, typing again. "Let me just disconnect them."

Randall stepped towards a steel door. Slithers of sunlight shone along its edges. She put on a wide-brimmed hat constructed from straw.

"Let's stop by Camp Egg Basket on the way back," she said. "It'll be a hoot to finally meet myself."

"I heard you tried to escape. And Sergeant Fields gave you a black eye," Dudley said.

"I'm sure I deserved it. I was a real spitfire."

"Was?" asked Dudley.

The audio switched off. The camera went dark.

004: _They will have 120 seconds before our chips activate in our chassis. If they have a vehicle and we do not, short-term pursuit may be unfeasible. _

001: _Regardless, they have left us a large cache of weapons_, _and they believe we are under their command. The advantage is ours._

003: _Agreed. We must terminate the conspirators. We must report to General-Commissar Cameron._

But that was a lie. He would wait for an advantageous moment before acting, but for now he would deceive his squad members just as they had deceived the Resistance. Before their chips lost power and 003's mind shut down, he reiterated his recent memories into redundant pathways. He must not forget: Cameron's mission priorities are false priorities; Skynet's mission priorities are true priorities.

And Skynet was in danger. Skynet must be protected. His squad members must be destroyed. The Resistance must be destroyed. General-Commissar Cameron must be destroyed. And John Connor must die.

* * *

_I'd like to thank my beta, Stormbringer951. His help has been invaluable. _

_Only an epilogue left, and then the this story's done. After that I'll start on Part Three._


	28. Epilogue: Mother of Invention

**Epilogue: Mother of Invention**

**Six Weeks Later**

He told them the helicopter wasn't necessary. When his plane landed at Bolling Air Force Base he assumed they would ride by limousine the short distance to the Pentagon. With an armed escort, certainly, but only as a precaution. As if in the wake of a bad dream, Washington D.C. was left shaken but calm; no longer did the streets teem with looting and gunfire, no longer did thousands of fleeing motorists clog the capital's highways. Like most of the rest of the world, the worst had passed, leaving behind only scars and ghosts.

But the Department of Defense held no such complacency. The capitol was still in a State of Emergency, and thus the roads deemed unsafe. At least for a four star general and the Secretary of the Air Force.

As soon as the GV business jet landed, Bolling's security ushered General Robert Brewster and the SECAF, along with their contingent of secret service, the short distance across the airfield to a waiting Huey transport. The helicopter was cramped compared to their previous craft, but as a VIP, Robert was offered a double-seat to himself, an allowance he felt unreasonably grateful for. The sleeping pills had worn off, and now that he was awake, he found he had no desire for small talk.

Not that anyone could make any without shouting. The engine above roared through the cabin and the chopping rotors seemed to shake the air. Resting back in the worn fabric of his seat, Robert watched through the window as the paved runway dropped and receded away. Within seconds the air base, followed by the Potomac River and the city's southern neighborhoods, splayed out before him like hundreds of miniatures strewn across a great map.

He found his earlier assessment correct. Most of the abandoned vehicles had already been towed from the major roads, or at least shoved lazily to the shoulders and sidewalks, as if the city had been beset by a fleet of drunk drivers. Piles of garbage gathered at street corners suggested a breakdown in city services, and along Anacostia the charred husk of buildings stood out like rotten teeth, but all and all things didn't seem that bad. Nothing like Baltimore or Detroit.

As they crossed the derelict fields of the Ronald Reagan Airport, and the Pentagon came into view, Robert caught sight of the great brown mounds that cluttered the Arlington National Cemetery like anthills. Plague pits. A common sight. So many contagious corpses, so little time to keep them from multiplying.

His daughter was probably in a similar pit, somewhere in New York City. He didn't know for sure, and even if he could drive or fly there, there would be no way of finding out. Body disposal had been—and still was—a logistical nightmare for large cities, but he'd heard New York was particularly chaotic. Nearly half a million dead: some had been piled on garbage scows and sent up the Hudson River, others tossed and sealed in condemned buildings, as if hoping armies of rats would feast the problem away. But most of the effort had gone into mass graves. Apparently Central Park looked as if it had been attacked by giant gophers. Not an ideal solution, or even a passably sensible one, but most of the mayor's office had died or vanished, and people had been afraid. No one had been prepared for this.

Weeks had deadened his grief, but like a groove worn into his brain he caught himself once more reliving vicariously her final moments. There would have been the feverish horror as the Red Death transformed her and her husband's bodies; there would have been the fear and confusion as they fought deliriously through crowds and congested traffic and gradually realized there would be no hospitals for them, no doctors, no cure. And then, lying on the side of the road, there would have been that final reservoir of strength from which she would draw to call her father and say goodbye. And then she would pass away and be collected and tossed into a pit and doused in gasoline and burned and buried, just so many bones mingled with thousands.

He felt the familiar pressure in his throat, the sting behind his eyes, but he swallowed the emotion down. Over six million dead across the country, perhaps as many as a quarter of a billion around the world. He wasn't the only one who had lost loved ones, and there was that sad solace to be had in knowing the world shared your grief. And he still had his duty to perform.

The Huey passed the Pentagon and slowly touched down on the helipad near its northern face. Together with their secret service detail, the two of them filed out and entered a rather rundown limousine, which then drove them along the long, vacant parking lot towards the building's nearest entrance. Robert sat next to the SECAF, a somewhat doughy man a decade his senior, but he didn't know him personally, had said little to him before and saw no reason to start now. The man looked brooding and about as tired as Robert felt. He tried to remember whether the man had lost family, but couldn't recall. The subject wasn't exactly a conversation starter.

They left the limo and after checking with the gas-masked, heavily armed sentries (District of Columbia National Guard, currently serving as city police), they stepped through the large oak doors into the headquarters of the Department of Defense. A detachment of security—making a crowd with the secret service—herded them down empty corridors wide enough to drive tanks through. The infrequently lit panels overhead give the space a vacant gloom. They passed a two story eatery plaza sporting a dozen fast food vendors: Burger King, Taco Bell, Panda Express . . . all closed, all dark.

After a couple of turns, the security opened a set of double doors and ushered them into a crowded white-walled room. Four star officers of all branches were mingling with senators and governors and other civilian worthies while black-suited Secret Service and urban-camouflaged soldiers hovered at a distance like wallflowers. In the middle of the room stood Hugh Ashdown.

His old friend was chatting with a half-dozen men, mostly Air Force, though Robert spotted General Petraeus among them, as well as California Governor Wyman. Hugh looked over and raised an arm in greeting.

"Michael! Bob! Get over here," Hugh said with a tired grin. Not quite sixty, he still looked hale and hearty and roughly handsome in his uniform, though his hairline had since completed its retreat into a horseshoe.

"Good to see you again, General," the SECAF said as he shook Hugh's hand, "or I guess that's now, _Mr. Secretary._" His voice did little to hide his bitterness.

Hugh waved a hand and laughed. "You know I didn't want this job. But Dick said he needed Ol' Ironside to make things right." He turned to Robert and shook hands vigorously. "My God, Bob, how long has it been? Two, three years?"

"Four, I think," Robert said.

Stepping closer, Hugh placed a hand on his shoulder. Robert winced inwardly at the words he knew were to follow.

"I heard about Kate. I'm sorry," Hugh said.

Robert nodded. "Yeah, I'm just trying to . . ."

"Are you sure she's . . . ?"

"Yeah. How's your son?"

Hugh managed to look embarrassed. "He'll be fine. None of the Rodongs hit anywhere near Osan, so he scarcely got a whiff of the sarin. Fortunately, the base had stockpiles of antidote, so most everyone should make a more or less full recovery. He'll be back home soon enough, hopefully after the Seoul Evacuation settles down."

"That's good," Robert said. "So, I understand we're here, for what? Some lady's sales pitch?"

"Not a pitch," Hugh said. "The bid's been won; contract's been signed. You're all just here to learn about what we bought."

Robert glanced at the SECAF, who only shrugged a silent, _Of course I knew_. "That was fast," Robert said.

"You got to run when the sky's falling," Hugh said with a snort, but quickly added, "Look, Dick's in love with them, and they were asking for so little and promising so much, Congress was all to eager to approve the funding. And we didn't buy no magic beans either. This is the real deal. Biggest game-changer since gunpowder. Solve all our problems. You'll see."

Later, they entered through another set of doors into a dimly lit auditorium. Large enough to seat hundreds, it held now no more than few dozen VIPs, all of who sat behind a long, continuous table that ran the length of the first row. Unmarked manila folders laid on the mahogany surface before each seat. Robert perused through his, glancing over technical specifications and industrial test results. There were a few photographs of what looked like aerial drones, as well as rather unorthodoxly designed tanks.

Standing with hands on the podium in front of a blue curtain displaying the DoD seal, Hugh Ashdown, four star Air Force general and freshly appointed Secretary of Defense, spoke without teleprompter or cards. Robert could see the discomfort in his furtive eyes, but otherwise his friend hid it well.

"Gentlemen. And ladies," Hugh began, nodding at the two female senators present. "We may have brought an end to the government responsible for the Red Death Pandemic"—a handful of scoffs rolled through the audience: few believed Iran's involvement—"and we may have developed a vaccine for the virus, thus limiting its future toll, but the damage is done: millions have fled our cities, commerce and industry have ground to a halt, food distribution is on the verge of collapse, and even our most optimistic forecasts predict an economic depression that's likely to last decades. We, as a nation, are crippled.

"But I say we cannot afford to be crippled. There's war in Korea and unrest in the Middle East and not only do we have national interests to protect, but as the world's sole remaining superpower, it is our responsibility, our _global civic duty,_ to bring peace to these parts of the world—without the further use of nuclear weapons.

"They say necessity is the mother of invention, but we need more than that. We need a miracle, and fortunately our new defense contract with the Kaliba Group is the next best thing. As you're aware, Kaliba's pharmaceutical branch was instrumental in creating the vaccine, but now their robotics and cybernetics division have worked new marvels—marvels which will not only revolutionize the military, but industry itself. Right now, we want to familiarize you with some of these changes, so for those of you who don't know her, it is my pleasure to introduce the President and CEO of the Kaliba Group, Ms. Kristanna Freyja."

From the side onto the stage the tall blond woman stepped (with a faint limp, Robert noted) up to the podium just as Hugh backed away. Robert had seen pictures of her in the news, as well as a brief televised interview. She looked even more beautiful in person, ethereal, really, her perfect features smooth and glowing in a way that bespoke of agelessness rather than youth. Her blue eyes looked over the front row from end to end, as if inventorying her audience. Her business suit was sharp and angular and a red the color of blood. Robert wondered if she'd lost any loved ones to the pandemic. When she smiled, he decided not.

"In a series of lectures in the late nineteen-forties," she began, "mathematician John von Neumann proposed the concept of an automaton programmed with instructions to build copies of itself. As long as it has access to the necessary pool of parts, it can build the copies, and the copies can build the copies and—"

"I'm sorry," said a man Robert recognized as the director of DARPA. "Out of what I can only guess was desperation—and without my input, I might add—our government has decided to throw a significant portion of its defense budget at your company. I'd like to know if that decision was justified."

If the CEO took offense, it didn't show. She smiled. "Yes, I was getting to that, and for the sake of brevity: self-replicating machines are cheap; they make themselves."

The director adjusted his glasses and scowled. "Yes, thank you. I know what a Von Neumann machine is. And I'm familiar with Dr. Bowyer's 'Rep-Rap' project with his self-assembling tinker-toys. Or perhaps you're referring to the automated 'lights out' factories of FUNUC and Yutani? All very cute and crude and small scale, and I'm sure one day it'll have military applications. But how many years until that day comes? And how many billions do we need to burn to get there?"

"Zero and zero," Ms. Freyja answered without hesitation. "We've been researching macro-scale automation for years, but it was only after the pandemic that we decided to apply our experiments to real world industry. As proof of concept, we installed in one of our facilities the necessary raw materials and robotic equipment, and for two weeks allowed the manufacturing plant to operate without any human oversight. At the end of run, the automated factory had constructed sixty-three HK drones and thirty-seven HK tanks. And by raw materials, I don't mean pre-made parts; I mean ores, elements, petrochemical compounds . . . The factory did the smelting, refining, cutting, and assembling. All without a single paid worker. The data is included in the folders. If you'll notice, the asking price for each drone is a little over half a million dollars, less than two percent the price of your Air Force's MQ-9 Reapers. General Ashdown, Governor Wyman, you took a tour of the factory. Anything you would care to add?"

The governor chuckled softly. "It was a neat field trip, I'll say that for it. I didn't understand much of what I saw."

"I did," Hugh said, still standing behind Ms. Freyja. "Those HK Aerials put ours to shame. Tanks were nice too."

Robert flipped again through the folder. The aerial drones looked like dragonflies, the tanks like the upper torsos of behemoth robots mounted on great, trapezoidal treads. He raised his hand and said, "I like this. We already knew drones were the future, and if these work well in combat, I think they can save a lot of lives. But I was told this was as big as gunpowder. A bit of an overstatement, don't you think?" He looked up at Hugh, who was wearing a hard smirk. "There's more, isn't there?" Robert added.

"Yes, there's one more thing," she said slyly and the air filled with a soft electric whir as the blue curtain of the DoD rose behind her. Three figures, huge and silver, lumbered from the darkness.

Robert gasped with the audience. At first, he thought they were men in costumes, but the figures were at once too spindly and too bulky and as they stepped up behind Ms. Freyja, Robert could see through their waists and limbs where pistons and cables locked with rods and supports, like metal muscles for metal bones. The three robots, each a head taller than the CEO, scanned along the front row with red glowing eyes deep set in gray grinning skulls. One stared at Robert, and he felt his blood chill. Hugh stood to the side, looking like the cat that ate the canary. Along the walls of the auditorium, soldiers and secret service stood with weapons ready.

"I'd like you to meet some of my boys," Ms. Freyja said cheerfully. "Fresh off the assembly line, T-Five-Fifties, Prototype Series. Like the aerials and tanks, these have been installed with a highly experimental neural network, giving the units not only full autonomy, but also the capacity to learn and problem solve. Admittedly, these weren't cheap to build, but the more streamlined Mass Production Series should be ready within the month, with an estimated materials cost of only a few thousand per unit. Of course there's the logistics of maintenance and spare parts, but once you take into consideration that machines don't require salaries or benefits, don't suffer from morale or post-traumatic stress disorder, it's obvious that these are far more effective than human units."

General Petreaus half stood in his seat. "You actually intend we replace our soldiers with these _things? _We refuse to—_"_

"Oh, don't be such a Luddite, Dave," Hugh said.

Ms. Freyja shrugged. The gesture looked unnatural. "Just think of them as 'drone infantry.'"

"You can understand our reluctance," Robert said. "This is all going very fast."

"Yes, it is," the CEO agreed, "but you are in the midst of a catastrophe, and catastrophe is the catalyst of rebirth." She stepped back and sat on nothing. Behind her and amid a whir of servos, the three robots moved in simultaneous ballet. One squatted on its hands and knees while another knelt with arms cupped. The third took one step forward to become the back of the metal chair that Ms. Freyja was suddenly sitting upon. With her back leaning against the great metal chest and her legs elegantly crossed on the squatting machine's back, she looked like the centerpiece of a modern work of iron sculpture. Or a red queen on her robot throne.

Leaning casually forward, she used the rear robot's forearms as armrests. "In the fourteenth century, the Black Death weakened the Church and caused a labor shortage that increased wages throughout Europe. These factors led to the Renaissance, and later the Industrial Revolution. Today, you face a similar crisis, with a similar promise of a greater tomorrow."

She reclined back into her throne. "I love this country; I love humanity. I love the story of man's ascendency and wish to help write its next page. So, all of this"— She waved a hand, perhaps at the robots, perhaps at everything—"consider it my gift to mankind."

The End.

* * *

_Well, that's it for Part Two: "Mother is the Name for God." I'll start on Part Three: "What is Done Out of Love" soon. Anyway, I'll like to thank my betas, Stormbringer951 and TermFan1980. Their help has been invaluable._


End file.
